
Book.____rL 






X"?.^. 



CQFm^GHT OEPOSir. 



o 



lo. 503. 



SO Oezxvs 




A TRl-WEEK, 




I^ OF THE BEST CURR£Sfr R STAXdARH flTFURTfiRF 



V. I. 1(1. Nc. 50S. Feb. 3, 18sS. Ai)iuittl Subscription, $30.00. 



CHARTISM 



THOMAS CARLYLE 

Author of "HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REV- 
OLUTION," " PAST AND PRESENT," &c. 



Eu leied at the Post Office, N. Y., as second-class matter. 
Copyright, 1885, by John W. Lovbll Co. 



+ JOHN'W-LOVELL- COMPANY + 



i^ 




% 




\. naat CLOTH TiTN'nT'Na fnr thie unlnm. /■<>•. h. >,kt->in<.rf fpnm tinu k«f,l».ll» <» •..ui.<t..lM n.lM \tkJh 



Parson Wilder 

CALLS ON 

MRS. PUFFY. 



xVjM^^:^, 




"It did my soul good," said 
Mrs. Puffy, "to see old Parson 
Wilder come In, tlie dear old 
soul ; he looked as smiling as a 
basket of cMps, and it was a 
nice morning, the sun shining 
right Into our sitting-room ; and, 
as luck would have it, I'd just 
got all cleaned up and had put on 
a clean calico and white apron, 
and, 11 I do say it, I looked as 
slick as a whistle ; and our gar- 
den—well, you'd oughter to see 
it— a mass of posies and blos- 
som everywhere ; and as it had 
rained in the night everything 
was as fresh as a cowcumber. 
'Well, well!' says the parson, 
'this Is a picture one could 
never forget,' and he looked at 
my floor and kitchen-table ; they 
were both white as snow, and 
my niillk pans— well you could 
just see your face In 'em, and 
everything was m neat as plnlc 




m 




"I cut him a pie and got him a pitcher of milk, 
'cause I could see he was powerful hungry, and 
when he got filled up he commenced : ' Cleanliness 
is next to Godliness ; now,' says he, ' what makes 
this home look so bright and pure as the lily?' 
SaysJ ' It's SapoUo ! ' 




" 'How? 'says he, putting his hand to his ear, 
'cause he's a little deaf. ' Sapolio ! ' I yelled in his 
ear. 'No,' says he, 'no; its virtoo, moral virtoo, 
that's er shining through it all,' and he kept that 
up till supper time, and stayed and eat a big sup- 
per (I'm afraid they ain't er feeding the old man as 
well up to his house as they oughter) ; and after 
he had gone hum, I couldn't help thinking, as I 
looked at my floor, table, pans and etceterer, that 
it may be moral virtoo shining thi'ough 'em hut it 
taTces Sapolio to fetch it out I » 



Latest Issues of Lovell's Library, 



273 Sketclies by Boz 20 

274 A Ohristmas Carol, etc. . 15 

275 lone Stewart 20 

278 Harold, 2 Parts, eaoa 15 

277 Dora Thorne 20 

278 Maid of Athens 20 

379 Oonqnest of Spain 10 

2150 Fitzooodle Papers, etc... 10 

281 Bracebridge Hall 20 

282 Uncommercial Traveller. 20 

283 Ronndabout Papers 20 

284 RosiMioyiie 20 

285 A Legend of the Rhine. . 10 

286 Cox's Dairy, etc 10 

287 Beyond Pardon 20 

288 Somebody's Luggage, etc 10 

289 Godolphin 20 

290 Salmagnndi 20 

291 Famous Funny Fellows.. 20 

292 Irish Sketches, etc 20 

293 The Battle of Life, etc... 10 

294 Pilgrims of the Rhine. . . 15 

295 Random Shots 20 

296 Men's Wives 10 

297 Mystery of Edwin Drood 20 

298 Reprinted Pieces 20 

299 Astoria. 20 

300 Novels by Emment Hands 10 

301 Conipanions of Columbus 20 

302 No Thorouqhfare 10 

303 Character Sketches, etc.. 10 

304 Christmas Books 20 

.^05 A Tour on the Prairies.. 10 

iOQ Ballads 15 

"07 rellowphish Papers 10 

■ 'S Life of Mahomet, Part 1. 15 

Life of Mahomet, Pt. II. 15 
■ Sketches and Travels in 

London n 

"10 Oliver Goldsmith, Irving 20 

. 1 Captain Bonneville 20 

312 Golden Girls 20 

.313 English Humorists. 15 

314 Moorish Chronicles 10 

315 Winifred Power 20 

316 Great Hoggarty Diamond 10 

317 Pausanias 15 

318 The New Abclard 20 

319 A Real Queen 2) 

320 The Rose and the Ring. . 20 

321 Wolferts Roost : and Mis- 

cellanies, by Irving 10 

322 Mark Seaworth 20 

323 Life of Paul Jones 20 

324 Round the World 20 

325 Elbow Room 20 

326 The Wizard's Son 25 

327 Harry Lorrequer 20 

328 How it All Came Round. 20 

329 Dante Rosetti's Poems. . . 20 

3:^0 The Canon's Ward 20 

331 Lucile, by O. Meredith. . 20 
3:52 Every Day Cook Book... 20 

335 Lays of Ancient Rome.. 20 

334 Life of Burns 20 

3:i5 The Young Foresters 20 

336 John Bull and His Island 20 

337 Salt Water, by Kingston. 20 
3;?8 The Midshipman 20 

339 Proctor's Po ms 30 

340 Clayton Rangers 20 

341 Schiller's Poems 20 

342 Goethe's Faust 20 

343 Goethe's Poems 20 

344 Life of Thackeray 10 

345 Dante's Vision of Hell, 
... Pm-gatory and Paradise 20 

3to An Interesting Case 20 

3 I Lifeof Byron, Nichol.... 10 

348 Lifeof Bunyan 10 

3 19 Valerie's Fate 10 

350 Grandfather Lick'shiiieie 20 

351 Lays of the Scottish Ca- 

valiers 20 



352 Willis' Poems 20 

353 Tales of the French Re- 

volution 15 

354 LoomaiulLueger 20 

355 More Leaves from a Lifo 

in the Highlands 15 

356 Hygiene of the Bram 25 

357 Berkeley the Banker 20 

358 Homes Abroad 15 

359 Scott's Lady of the Lake, 

with notes 20 

360 Modern Christianity a 

Civilized Heathenism. . 15 

361 Life of Shelley 10 

362 Goldsmith's Plays ; and 

Poems 20 

363 For Each and for All. ... 15 

364 Life of Scott 10 

365 The Pathfinder 20 

366 The Sergeant's Legacy. . 20 

367 An Old Man's Love 15 

368 Old Lady Mary 10 

369 Lifeof Hume 10 

370 Twice-Told Tales 20 

371 The Story of Chinese 

Gordon, A. E. Hake... 20 

372 Hill and Valley 15 

373 Essays, hy Emerson 20 

374 Essays, by George Eliot. . 20 

375 Science at Home 20 

376 Grandfather's Chair 20 

377 Lifeof Defoe 10 

878 Homeward Bound 20 

379 The Charmed Sea 15 

330 Lifeof Locke 10 

381 A Fair Device 20 

382 Thaddeiisof Warsaw.... 20 

383 Lifeof Gibbon 10 

384 Dorothy Forster 20 

1385 Swiss Family Robinson.. 26 

386 Childhood of the World. . 10 

387 Princess Napraxine 25 

388 Life in the WUds 15 

889 Paradise Lost 20 

330 The Land Question 10 

391 Homer's Odyssey 20 

393 Lifeof Milton 10 

393 Social Problems 20 

394 The Giant's Robe 20 

395 Sowers not Reapers 15 

396 Homer's Iliad 30 

397 Ai-abian Nights' Enter- 

tainments 25 

398 Life of Pope 10 

399 John Holdsworth 20 

400 Glen of the Echoes 15 

401 Life of Johnson 10 

402 How he Reached the 

White House 25 

403 Poems, by B. A. Poe 20 

404 Lifeof Southey 10 

405 Lifeof J. G. Blaine 20 

406 Pole on Whist 15 

407 Life of Burke 10 

408 The Brierfleld Tragedy.. 20 

409 Adrift with a Vengeance 25 

410 Life of Wordsworth 10 

411 Children of the Abbey. . . 30 

412 Poems, by Swinburne.... 20 

413 Lifeof Chaucer 10 

414 Over the Summer Sea. . . 20 

415 A Peiilous Secret 20 

416 Lalla Rookh, by Moore. . 20 

417 Don Quixote 30 

418 " I Say No," by Collins. . 20 

419 Andersen's Fairy Tales. . 20 

420 A Broken Wedding-Ring 20 

421 Aurora Leigh 20 

423 Cavendish Card Essays. . IS 

423 Repented at Leisure 20 

424 Life of Cowper, Smith... 10 

425 Self-Help, by Smiles 25 

426 Narrative of A. Gordon 

Pym 15 



427 Lifeof Grover Cleveland 20 

428 Robinson Crusoe 25 

439 Called Back, by Conway. 15 

430 Bums' Poems 20 

431 Life of Spenser 10 

432 The Gokl Bug, by Poe. . . 15 
4;« Wrecks in the Sea of Life 20 

434 Typhaines Abbey 25 

435 Miss Tommy, by Mulock. 15 

436 The Light of Asia 20 

4:37 Tales of Two Idle Ap- 

prGviticss 15 

438 The Assignation & Other' 

Tales, by E A. Poe.... 15 

439 Nootes AmbrosianEe 30 

440 History of the Mormons. 15 

441 Home as Foimd 20 

442 Taine's English Litcra- 

tm-e 40 

443 Bryant's Poems 20 

444 An Ishmaelite 20 

445 The Rival Doctors, by 

Lapointe 20 

446 Tennyson's Poems 40 

447 The Murder in the Rue 

Morgue and Other Tales 15 

448 Life of Predrika Bremer. 20 

449 Quisisana 20 

450 Whittier's Poems 20 

451 Doris, by The Duchess.. 20 
4.52 Mystic London 20 

453 Black Poodle and Other 

Tales, by F. Anstey.... 20 

454 The Golden Dog 40 

455 Fearls of the Faith 15 

456 Judith Shakespeare 20 

457 Pope's Poems 30 

458 Sunshine and Roses 20 

459 John Bull and His Daugh- 

ters, by Max O'Rell .... 20 

460 Galaski, by Bayne 20 

461 Sociahsm 10 

463 Dark Days 15 

463 Deerslayer, by Cooper... 30 ' 

464 Two years 'before the 

Mast, by R. H. Dana, Jr 20 

465 Earl's Atonement 20 

466 Under the Will, by Hay. . 10 

467 Prairie, by Cooper 20 

468 The Count of Talavera.. 2) 

469 Chase, by Lermina 29 

470 Vic, by A. Benrimo 15 

4 1 1 Pioneer, by Cooper 25 

472 Indian Song of Songs 10 

473 Christmas Stories 20 

474 A Woman's Temptation. 20 

475 Sheep in Wolf's Clothing. 20 

476 Love Works Wonders 20 

477 A Week in Killarney 10 

478 Tartai-in of Tarascon 20 

479 Mrs. Browning's Poems. 35 

480 Alice's Adventures 20 

481 Through the Looking- 

Glass, by Lewis Carroll 20 

482 Longfellow's Poems 20 

483 The Child Hunters 15 

484 The Two Admirals 20 

485 My Roses, by French ... 20 

486 History of the French 

Revolution. Vol I.... 25 

486 History of the French. 

Revolution. Vol. II... 25 

487 Moore's Poems 40 

488 Water Witch 20 

4S9 Bride of Lammermoor... 20 

490 Black Dwarf 10 

491 Red Rover 20 

492 Castle Dangerous 15 

493 Legend of Montrose 15 

494 Past and Pi-esent 20 

495 Surgeon's Daughter 10 

496 Woman's Trials 2a 

497 Sesame and Lilies 10 

491i Dryden's Poems 30 



THIS IS THK O^KMUINK 

Sold only in bottles witli buff -wrappers. See that slip over cork is 

unbroken. Our trade-mark around every bottle. 

In Sickness Every Drop is 'Worth its 'Weight in Gold. 






GO 







CO 

o 

p^ 

CD 






^ 



IT subdues and heals all kinds of Inflammation, Piles, Blinis 
Bleeding, or Itching, Ulcers, Old or New Wounds, Beuises, Burns, 
Toothache, Earache, Sore Eyes, Scalds, Sprains, the greatest known 
remedy. Catarrh, Colds, Diarrhcea, Rheumatism, Neuralgia, has cured 
more cases than anything ever prescribed. Dij-htheria, Sore Throat, use it 
promptly, delay is dangerous. Controls Hemorrhages, Female Com- 
plaints, Bleeding Nose, Mouth, Stomach; Lungs, or from any cause, stopped 
as by a charm. It is called the Wonder of Healing. We have an avalanche 
of testimonials. Send for our book (Mailed free), it will tell you all about it. 
Prices,— Small, 50 cents ; Medium, $1.00 ; Large, fl.T5. 

POND'S EXTRACT CO., 76 5th Ave., New York. 

Usea externally and internally. It is unsafe to use any preparation except 
the genuine with our directions. 



CHARTISM 



THOMAS CAELYLE 



'It never smokes but there is fire."— Old Proverb 

In 




NEW YORK 
JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

14 AND 16 Vesey Street 









TR0W3 
PRINTING AND DOOKBINC 
NEW YORK 



CO^TE:t^TS, 



Chap. I. Condition-of-England Question, 
II. Statistics, . . .' . 

III. New Poor-Law, . . . , 

IV. Finest Peasantry in the World, 
V. Rights and Mights, . 

VI. Laissez-Faire, .... 
VII. Not Laissez-Faire, 
Vni. New Eras, .... 
IX. Parliamentary Radicalism, 
X. Impossible, . . . - . 



PAGE 

5 
11 

15 
21 
30 
39 
49 
53 
68 
72 



CHARTISM.^ 



CHAPTEE I. 

CONDITION-OF-ENGLAND QUESTION. 

A feeling very generally exists that the condition and dis- 
position of the working Classes is a rather ominous matter at 
present ; that something ought to be said, something ought 
to be done, in regard to it. And surely at an epoch of his- 
tory when the ' National Petition ' carts itself in waggons along 
the streets, and is presented ' bound with iron hoops, four 
men bearing it,' to a Eeformed House of Commons ; and 
Chartism numbered by the million and haK, taking nothing 
by its iron-hooped Petition, breaks out into brickbats, cheap 
pikes, and even into sputterings of conflagration, such very 
general feeling cannot be considered unnatural ! To us individ- 
ually this matter appears, and has for many years appeared, 
to be the most ominous of all practical matters whatever ; 
matter in regard to which if somethingbe not done, something 
will do itself one day, and in a fashion that will please nobody. 
The time is verily come for acting in it ; how much more for 
consultation about acting in it, for speech and articulate in- 
quiry about it ! 

We are aware that, according to the newspapers. Chartism 
is extinct ; that a Keformed Ministry has ' put down the 
chimera of Chartism ' in the most felicitous effectual manner. 
So s:iy the newspapers ; — and yet, alas, most readers of news- 
papers know withal that it is indeed the ' chimera ' of Chartism, 
not the reality, which has been put down. The distracted in- 
coherent embodiment of Chartism, whereby in late months it 
* First published in January, 1840. 



6 CHABTI8M. 

took shape and became visible, this has been put down ; or 
rather has fallen down and gone asunder by gravitation and law 
of nature ; but the living essence of Chartism has not been put 
down. Chartism means the bitter discontent grown fierce and 
mad, the wrong condition therefore or the wrong disposition, of 
the Working Classes of England. It is a new name for a thing 
which has had many names, and which will yet have many. The 
matter of Chartism is weighty, deep-rooted, far extending ; did 
not begin yesterday ; wiU by no means end this day or to-mor- 
row. Reform Ministry, constabulary rural police, new levy of 
soldiers, grants of money to Birmingham ; all this is well, or 
is not well ; all this will put down only the embodiment or 
' chimera ' of Chartism. The essence continuing, new and 
ever new embodiments, chimeras madder or less mad, have to 
continue. The melancholy fact remains, that this thing known 
at present by the name Chartism does exist, has existed ; and, 
either 'put down,' into secret treason, with rusty pistols, vit- 
riol-bottle and match-box, or openly brandishing pike and 
torch (one knows not in which case more fatal-looking), is like 
to exist tiU quite other methods have been tried with it. 
"What means this bitter discontent of the Working Classes ? 
Whence comes it, whither goes it ? Above all, at what price, 
on what terms, will it probably consent to depart from us and 
die into rest ? These are questions. 

To say that it is mad, incendiary, nefarious, is no answer. 
To say all this, in never so many dialects, is saying little. 
'Glasgow Thuggery,' 'Glasgow Thugs;' it is a witty nick- 
name : the practice of ' Number 60 ' entering his dark room, 
to contract for and settle the price of blood with operative 
assassins, in a Christian city, once distinguished by its rigorous 
Christianism, is doubtless a fact worthy of all horror : but 
what will horror do for it ? What will execration ; nay at 
bottom what will condemnation and banishment to Botany 
Bay do for it ? Glasgow Thuggery, Chartist torch-meetings, 
Birmingham riots. Swing conflagrations, are so many sjanp- 
toms on the surface ; you abolish the symptom to no purpose, 
if the disease is left untouched. Boils on the surface are cur- 
able or incurable, — small matter which, while the virulent 



CONDITION- OF-EJSrOLANB QUESTION. < 

humour festers deep -within ; poisoning the source of Kfe ; 
and certain enough to find for itself ever new boils and sore 
issues ; ways of announcing that it continues there, that it 
would fain not continue there. 

Delirious Chartism will not have raged entirely to no pur- 
pose, as indeed no earthly thing does so, if it have forced all 
thinking men of the community to think of this vital matter, too 
apt to be overlooked otherwise. Is the condition of the Eng- 
Hsh working people wrong ; so wrong that rational working 
men cannot, will not, and even should not rest quiet under it ? 
A most grave case, complex beyond all others in the world ; 
a case wherein Botany Bay, constabulaiy rural police, and 
such like, will avail but httle. Or is the discontent itself mad, 
like the shape it took ? Not the condition of the working peo- 
ple that is wrong ; but theu' disposition, their own thoughts, 
beHefs and feelings that are wrong? This too were a most 
grave case, little less alarming, little less complex, than the 
former one. In this case too, where constabulary police and 
mere rigour of coercion seems more at home, coercion will by 
no means do all, coercion by itself will not even do much. If 
there do exist general madness of discontent, then sanity and 
some measure of content must be brought about again, — not 
by constabulary pohce alone. When the thoughts of a people, 
in the great mass of it, have grown mad, the combined issue 
of that people's workings will be a madness, an incohercncy 
and ruin ! Sanity will have to be recovered for the general 
mass ; coercion itself will otherwise cease to be able to coerce. 

We have heard it asked. Why Parliament throws no light 
on this question of the Working Classes, and the condition or 
disposition they are in ? Truly to a remote observer of Par- 
liamentary procedure it seems surprising, especially in late 
Reformed times, to see what space this question occupies in 
the Debates of the Nation. Can any other business whatso- 
ever be so pressing on legislators ? A Reformed Parhament, 
one would think, should inquire into popular discontents he- 
fore they get the length of pikes and torches ! For what end 
at aU are men, Honourable Me»mbers and Reform Members, 
sent to St. Stephen's, with clamour and effort ; kept talking, 



8 CHARTISM. 

struggling, motioning and counter-motioning ? The condition 
of the great body of people in a country is the condition of 
the country itself : this you would say is a truism in all times ; 
a truism rather pressing to get recognised as a truth now, 
and be acted upon, in these times. Yet read Hansai'd's De- 
bates, or the Morning Papers, if you have nothing to do ! 
The old grand question, whether A is to be in office or B, 
with the innumerable subsidia,ry questions growing out of 
that, courting paragraphs and suffrages for a blessed solution 
of that : Canada question, Irish Appropriation question, West 
India question, Queen's Bedchamber question ; Game Laws, 
Usury Laws ; African Blacks, Hill CooHes, Smithfield cattle, 
and Dog-carts, — all manner of questions and subjects, except 
simply this the alpha and omega of all ! Surely Honourable 
Members ought to speak of the Condition-of-England ques- 
tion too. Radical Members, above all ; friends of the people ; 
chosen with effort, by the people, to intrepret and articulate 
the dumb deep want of the people ! To a remote observer 
they seem oblivious of their duty. Are they not there, by 
trade, mission, and express appointment of themselves and 
others, to speak for the good of the British Nation ? What- 
soever great British interest can the least speak for itself, for 
that beyond all they are called to speak. They are either 
speakers for that great dumb toiling class which cannot speak,^ 
or they are nothing that one can well specify. 

Alas, the remote observer knows not the nature of Parlia- 
ments : how Parliaments, extant there for the British Nation's 
sake, find that they are extant withal for their own sake ; how 
Parliaments travel so naturally, in their deep-rutted routine, 
common-place worn into ruts axle-deep, from which only 
strength, insight and courageous generous exertion can lift 
any Parliament or vehicle ; how in Parliaments, Reformed or 
Unreformed, there may chance to be a strong man, an origi- 
nal, clear-sighted, great hearted, patient and valiant man, or 
there may chance be to none such ; — how, on the whole, Parlia- 
ments, lumbering along in their deep ruts of comraon-place, 
find, as so many of us otherwise do, that the ruts are axle- 
deep, and the travelling very toilsome of itself, and for the 



CONDITION-OF-ENOLAND QUESTION. 9 

day the evil thereof sufficient ! What Parliaments ought to 
have done in this business, what they will, can or cannot yet 
do, and where the limits of their faculty and culpability may 
lie, in regard to it, were a long investigation ; into which we 
need not enter at this moment. What they have done is unhap- 
pily plain enough. Hitherto, on this most national of ques- 
tions, the Collective Wisdom of the Nation has availed us as 
good as nothing whatever. 

And yet, as we say, it is a question which cannot be left to 
the Collective Folly of the Nation ! In or out of Parliament, 
darkness, neglect, hallucination must contrive to cease in re- 
gard to it ; true insight into it must be had. How inexpress- 
ibly useful were true insight into it ; a genuine understanding 
by the upper classes of society what it is that the under classes 
intrinsically mean ; a clear interpretation of the thought which 
at heart torments these wild inarticulate souls, strugghng 
there, with inarticulate uproar, like dumb creatures in pain, 
unable to speak what is in them ! Something they do mean ; 
some true thing withal, in the centre of their confused hearts, 
— for they are hearts created by Heaven too : to the Heaven 
it is clear what thing ; to us not clear. Would that it were ! 
Perfect clearness on it were equivalent to remedy of it. For, 
as is well said, all battle is misunderstanding ; did the parties 
know one another, the battle would cease. No man at bot- 
tom means injustice ; it is always for some obscure distorted 
image of aright that he contends : an obscure image diffracted, 
exaggerated, in the wonderfullest way, by natural dimness and 
selfishness ; getting tenfold more diffracted by exasperation 
of contest, till at length it become all but irrecognisable ; yet 
still the image of a right. Could a man own to himself that 
the thing he fought for was wrong, contrary to fairness and 
the law of reason, he would own also that it thereby stood con- 
demned and hopeless ; he could fight for it no longer. Nay 
independently of right, could the contending parties get but 
accurately to discern one another's might and strength to con- 
tend, the one would peaceably yield to the other and to Ne- 
cessity ; the contest in this case too were over. No African 
expedition now, as in the days of Herodotus, is fitted out 



10 CHARTISM. 

against the South-wind. One expedition was satisfactory in 
that department. The South-wind Simoom continues blow- 
ing occasionally, hateful as ever, maddening as ever ; but one 
expedition was enough. Do we not all submit to Death? 
The highest sentence of the law, sentence of death, is passed 
on all of us by the fact of birth ; yet we live patiently under 
it, patiently undergoing it when the hour comes. Clear un- 
deniable right, clear undeniable might : either of these once 
ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused ex- 
periment to ascertain one and both of these. 

What are the rights, what are the mights of the discon- 
tented Working Classes in England at this epoch ? He were 
an (Edipus, and deliverer from sad social pestilence, who 
could resolve us fully ! For we may say beforehand. The 
struggle that divides the upper and lower in society over Eu- 
rope, and more painfully and notably in England than else- 
where, this too is a struggle which will end and adjust itself 
as all other struggles do and have done, by making the right 
clear and the might clear ; not otherwise than by that. Mean- 
time, the questions. Why are the Working Classes discon- 
tented ; what is their condition, economical, moral, in their 
houses and their hearts, as it is in reality and as they figure 
it to themselves to be ; what do they complain of ; what ought 
they, and ought they not to complain of ? — these are measur- 
able questions ; on some of these any common mortal, did he 
but turn his eyes to them, might throw some light. Certain 
researches and considerations of ours on the matter, since no 
one else will undertake it, are now to be made public. The 
researches have yielded us little, almost nothing ; but the con- 
siderations are of old date, and press to have utterance. We 
are not without hope that our general notion of the business, 
if we can get it uttered at all, will meet some assent from 
many candid men. 



STATISTICS. 11 

CHAPTEE n. 

STATISTICS. 

A witty statesman said you might prove anything by figures. 
We have looked into various statistic works, Statistic-Society 
Reports, Poor-Law Eeports, Reports and Pamphlets not a few, 
with a sedulous eye to this question of the "Working Classes 
and their general condition in England ; we grieve to say, 
with as good as no result whatever. Assertion swallows asser- 
tion ; according to the old Proverb, ' as the statist thinks, the 
bell clinks ! ' Tables are like cobwebs, like the sieve of the 
Danaides ; beautifully reticulated, orderly to look upon, but 
which will hold no conclusion. Tables are abstractions, and 
the object a most concrete one, so difficult to read the essence 
of. There are innumerable circumstances ; and one circum- 
stance left out may be the vital one on which all turned. 
Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis 
of many most important sciences ; but it is not to be carried 
on by steam, this science, any more than others are ; a wise 
head is requisite for carrying it on. Conclusive facts are in- 
separable from inconclusive except by a head that already 
understands and knows. Vaiti to send the purbhnd and blind 
to the shore of a Pactolus never so golden : these find only 
gravel ; the seer and finder alone picks up gold grains there. 
And now the purblind offering you, with asseveration and 
protrusive importunity, his basket of gravel as gold, what steps 
are to be taken with him ? — Statistics, one may hope, will im- 
prove gradually, and become good for something. Meanwhile 
it is to be feared, the crabbed satirist was partly right, as 
things go : ' A judicious man,' says he, ' looks at Statistics, 
' not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having igno- 
' ranee foisted on him.' With what serene conclusiveness a 
member of some Useful-Knowledge Society stops your mouth 
with a figure of arithmetic ! To him it seems he has there ex- 
tracted the elixir of the matter, on which now nothing more 
can be said. It is needful that you look into his said extracted 



12 CHABTI8M. 

elixir ; and ascertain, alas, too probably, not without a sigh, 
tliat it is wash and vapidity, good only for the gutters. 

Twice or three times have we heard the lamentations and 
prophecies of a humane Jeremiah, mourner for the poor, cut 
short by a statistic fact of the most decisive nature : How can 
the condition of the poor be other than good, be other than 
better ; has not the average duration of life in England, and 
therefore among the most numerous class in England, been 
proved to have increased ? Our Jeremiah had to admit that, 
if so, it was an astounding fact ; whereby all that ever he, for 
his part, had observed on other sides of the matter was overset 
without remedy. If life last longer, life must be less worn 
upon, by outward suffering, by inward discontent, by hardship 
of any kind ; the general condition of the poor must be bet- 
tering instead of worsening. So was our Jeremiah cut short. 
And now for the ' proof ? ' Eeaders who are curious in statistic 
proofs may see it drawn out with all solemnity, in a Pamphlet 
' published by Charles Knight and Company,"* — and perhaps 
himself draw inferences from it ; Northampton Tables, com- 
piled by Dr. Price ' from registers of the Parish of All Saints 
from 1735 to 1780 ; ' Carhsle Tables, collected by Dr. Hey- 
sham from observation of Carlisle City for eight years, 'the 
calculations founded on them ' conducted by another Doctor ; 
incredible ' document considered satisfactory by men of sci- 
ence in France : ' — alas, is it not as if some zealous scientific 
son of Adam had proved the deepening of the Ocean, by sur- 
vey, accurate or cursory, of two mud-plashes on the coast of 
the Isle of Dogs ? ' Not to get knowledge, but to save your- 
self from having ignorance foisted on you ! ' 

The condition of the working man in this country, what it 
is and has been, whether it is improving or retrograding,— is 
a question to which from statistics hitherto no solution can be 
got. Hitherto, after many tables and statements, one is still 
left mainly to what he can ascertain by his own eyes, looking 
at the concrete phenomenon for himself. There is no other 
method ; and yet it is a most imperfect method. Each man 

* An Essay on the Means of Insurance against tlie Casualties of &c., 
&c. London, Charles Knight and Company, 1836. Price two shillings. 



STATISTICS. 13 

expands his own hand-breadth of observation to the limits of 
the general whole ; more or less, each man must take what he 
himself has seen and ascertained for a sample of all that is 
seeable and ascertainable. Hence discrepancies, controversies 
wide-spread, long-continued ; which there is at present no 
means or hope of satisfactorily ending. When Parliament 
takes up the ' Condition-of-England question,' as it will have 
to do one day, then indeed much may be amended! Inquiries 
wisely gone into, even on this most complex matter, will yield 
results worth something, not nothing. But it is a most com- 
plex matter ; on which, whether for the past or the present. 
Statistic Inquiry, with its limited means, with its short vision 
and headlong extensive dogmatism, as yet too often throws 
not light, but error worse than darkness. 

What constitutes the well-being of a man ? Many things ; 
of which the wages he gets, and the bread he buys with them, 
are but one preliminary item. Grant, however, that the 
wages were the whole ; that once knowing the wages and the 
price of bread, we know all ; then what are the wages ? 
Statistic Inquiry, in its present unguided condition, cannot 
tell. The average rate of day's wages is not correctly as- 
certained for any portion of this country ; not only not for 
half-centuries, it is not even ascertained anywhere for decades 
or years : far from instituting comparisons with the past, the 
present itself is unknown to us. And then, given the average 
of wages, what is the constancy of employment ; what is the 
difficulty of finding employment ; the fluctuation from season 
to season, from year to year? Is it constant, calculable 
wages ; or fluctuating, incalculable, more or less of the nature 
of gambling? This secondary circumstance, of qualitj^ in 
wages, is perhaps even more important than the primary one 
of quantity. Farther we" ask, Can the labourer, by thrift and 
industry, hope to rise to mastership ; or is such hope cut off 
from him ? How is he related to his employer ; by bonds of 
friendliness and mutual help ; or by hostility, opposition, and 
chains of mutual necessity alone? In a word, what degree of 
contentment can a human creature be supposed to enjoy in 
that i:o3ition ? With hunger preying on him, his content- 



li CHARTISM. 

ment is liliely to be small ! But even with abundfince, his 
discontent, his real misery may be great. The labourer's 
feelings, his notion of being justly dealt with or unjustly ; his 
wholesome composure, frugality, prosperity in the one case, 
his acrid unrest, recklessness, gin-drinking, and gradual ruin 
in the other, — how shall figures of arithmetic represent all 
this ? So much is still to be ascertained ; much of it by no 
means easy to ascei'tain ! Till, among the 'Hill Cooly ' and 
' Dog-cart ' questions, there arise in Parliament and extensively 
outof it a 'Condition-of -England question,' and quite a new set 
of inquirers and methods, little of it is likely to be ascertained. 
One fact on this subject, a fact which arithmetic is capable 
of representing, we have often considered would be worth all 
the rest : whether the labourer, whatever his wages are, is 
saving money ? Laying up money, he proves that his condi- 
tion, painful as it may be without and within, is not yet 
desperate ; that he looks forward to a better day coming, and 
is still resolutely steering toward the same ; that all the lights 
and darkness of his lot are united under a blessed radiance 
of hope, — the last, first, nay one may say the sole blessedness 
of man. Is the habit of saving increased and increasing, or 
the contrary ? "Where the present writer has been able to 
look with his own eyes, it is decreasing, and in many quarters 
all but disappearing. Statistic science turns up her Savings- 
Bank Accounts, and answers, "Licreasing rapidly." Would 
that one could believe it ! But the Danaides'-sieve character 
of such statistic reticulated documents is too manifest. A 
few years ago, in regions where thrift, to one's own knowledge, 
still was, Savings-Banks were not ; the labourer lent his 
money to some farmer, of capital, or supposed to be of capital, 
— and has too often lost it since ; or he bought a cow with it, 
bought a cottage with it ; nay hid it under his thatch : the 
Savings-Banks books then exhibited mere blank and zero. 
That they swell yearly now, if such be the fact, indicates that 
what thrift exists does gradually resort more and more thither 
rather than elsewither ; but the question, Is thrift increasing? 
runs through the reticulation, and is as water spilt on the 
ground, not to be gathered here. 



NEW POOR-LAW. 15 

These are inquiries on which, had there been a proper 
" ' Con dition-of -England question,' some hght would have been 
thrown before ' torch-meetings ' arose to illustrate them ! 
For as they lie out of the course of Parliamentary routine, 
they should have been gone into, should have been glanced 
at, in one or the other fashion. A Legislature making laws, 
for the Working Classes, in total uncertainty as to these things, 
is legislating in th*e dark ; not wisely, nor to good issues. 
The simple fundamental question. Can the labouring man 
in this England of ours,, who is willing to labour, find work, 
and subsistence by his work? is matter of mere conjecture 
and assertion hitherto ; not ascertainable by authentic evi- 
dence : the Legislature, satisfied to legislate in the dark, has 
not yet sought any evidence on it. They pass their New 
Poor-Law Bill, without evidence as to all this. Perhaps their 
New Poor-Law Bill is itself only intended as an experimentum 
crucis to ascertain all this ? Chartism is an answer, seem- 
ingly not in the affirmative. 



CHAPTER III. 

NEW POOK-LAW. 



To read the Eeports of the Poor-Law Commissioners, if one 
had faith enough, would be a pleasure to the friend of hu- 
manity. One sole recipe seems to have been needful for the 
woes of England: 'refusal of out-door relief.' England lay 
in sick discontent, writhing powerless on its fever-bed, dark, 
nigh desperate, in wastefulness, want, improvidence, and eat- 
ing care, till like Hyperion down the eastern steeps, the Poor- 
Law Commissioners arose, and said, Let there be workhouses, 
and bread of affiiction and water of affliction there ! It was a 
simple invention ; as all truly great inventions are. And see, 
in any quarter, instantly as the walls of the workhouse arise, 
misery and necessity fly away, out of sight,— out of being, as 
is fondly hoped, and dissolve into the inane ; industry, fru- 
gality, fertilitj^, rise of wages, peace on earth and goodwill 
towards men do, — in the Poor-Law Commissioners' Reports, 



16 CHARTISM. 

■ — infallibly, rapidly or not so rapidly, to the joy of all parties, 
supervene. It was a consummation devoutly to be wished. ' 
We have looked over these four annual Poor-LaAv Reports 
with a variety of reflections ; with no thought that our Poor- 
Law Commissioners are the inhuman men their enemies 
.accuse them of being ; with a feeling of thankfulness rather 
that there do exist men of that structure too ; with a persua- 
sion deeper and deeper that Nature, who makes nothing to no 
purpose, has not made either them or their Poor-Law Amend- 
ment Act in vain. We hope to prove that they and it were 
an indispensable element, harsh but salutary, in the progress 
of things. 

That this Poor-Law Amendment Act meanwhile should be, 
as we sometimes hear it named, the ' chief glory ' of a Reform 
Cabinet, betokens, one would imagine, rather a scarcity of 
glory there. To say to the poor, Ye shall eat the bread of 
affliction and drink the water of affliction and be very miser- 
able while here, required not so much a stretch of heroic 
faculty in any sense, as due toughness of bowels. If paupers 
are made miserable, paupers will needs decline in multitude. 
It is a secret known to all rat-catchers : stop up the granary- 
crevices, afflict with continual mewing, alarm, and going-off 
of traps, your ' chargeable labourers ' disappear, and cease 
from the establishment. A still briefer method is that of ar- 
senic : perhaps even a milder, where otherwise permissible. 
Rats and paupers can be abolished ; the human faculty was 
from of old adequate to grind them down, slowly or at once, 
and needed no ghost or Reform Ministry to teach it. Fur- 
thermore when one hears of ' all the labour of the country 
being absorbed into employment ' by this new system of 
affliction, when labour complaining of want can find no audi- 
ence, one cannot but pause. That misery and unemployed 
labour should ' disappear ' in that case is natural enough ; 
should go out of sight — but out of existence? What we do 
know is that 'the rates are diminished,' as they cannot Avell 
help being ; that no statistic tables as yet report much in- 
crease of deaths by starvation : this we do know, and not 
very conclusively anything more than this. If this be absorp- 



I^EW POOR-LAW. IT 

tion of all the labour of the country, then all the labour of 
the country is absorbed. 

To believe practically that the poor and luckless are here 
only as a nuisance to be abraded and abated, and in some 
permissible manner made away with, and swept out of sight, 
is not an amiable faith. That the arrangements of good and 
ill success in this perplexed scramble of a world, which a 
bhud goddess was always thought to preside over, are in fact 
the work of a seeing goddess or god, and require only not to 
be meddled with : what stretch • of heroic faculty or inspira- 
tion of genius was needed to teach one that ? To button 
your pockets and stand still, is no complex recipe. Laissez 
faire, laissez passer I Whatever goes on, ought it not to go 
on ; * the widow picking nettles for her children's dinner, and 
'the perfumed seigneur delicately lounging in the (Eil-de- 
' Boeuf, who has an alchemy whereby he will extract frora 
' her the third nettle, and name it rent and law ? ' What is 
written and enacted, has it not black-on-white to shew for it- 
self ? Justice is justice ; but all attorney's parchment is of 
the nature of Targum or sacred-parchment. In brief, oiu's is 
a world requiring only to be well let alone. Scramble along, 
thou insane scramble of a world, M'ith thy pope's tiaras, king's 
mantles and beggar's gabardines, chivalry-ribbons and ple- 
beian gallows-ropes, where a Paul shall die on the gibbet and 
a Nero sit fiddling as imperial Csesar ; thou art all right, and 
shalt scramble even so ; and whoever in the press is trodden 
down, has only to lie there and be trampled broad : — Such at 
bottom seems to be the chief social principle, if principle it 
have, which the Poor-Law Amendment Act has the merit of 
courageously asserting, in oj)position to many things. A 
chief social principle which this present writer, for one, will 
by no manner of means believe in, but pronounce at all fit 
times to be false, heretical and damnable, if ever aught was ! 

And yet, as Ave said, Nature makes nothing in vain ; not 
even a Poor-Law Amendment Act. For withal we are far 
from joining in the outcry raised against these Poor-Law 
Commissioners, as if they were tigers in men's shape ; as if 
their Amendment Act were a mere monstrosity and horror, 
3 



18 CHARTISM. 

deserving instant abrogation. They are not tigers ; they are 
men filled with an idea of a theory ; their Amendment Act, 
heretical and da,mnable as a whole truth, is orthodox laudable 
as a half truth ; and was imperatively required to be put in 
practice. To create men filled with a theory that refusal of- 
out-door relief was the one thing needful : Nature had no 
readier way of getting out-door relief refused. In fact, if we 
look at the old Poor Law, in its assertion of the opposite 
social principle, that Fortune's awards are not those of Justice, 
we shall find it to have become still more unsujDportable, de- 
manding, if England was not destined for speedy anarchy, to 
be done away with. 

Any law, however well meant as a law, which has become, 
a bounty on unthrift, idleness, bastardy and beer-drinking, 
must be put an end to. In all ways it needs, especially in 
these times, to be proclaimed aloud that for the idle man there 
is no place in this England of ours. He that will not work, 
and save according to his means, let him go elsewhither ; let 
him know that for hivi the Law has made no soft provision, 
but a hard and stern one ; that by the Law of Nature, which 
the LaAV of England would vainly contend against in the long- 
run, he is doomed either to quit these habits, or miserably be 
extruded from this Earth, which is made on principles dif- 
ferent from these. He that will not work according to his 
faculty, let him perish according to his necessity : there is no 
law juster than that. Would to heaven one could preach it 
abroad into the hearts of all sons and daughters of Adam, for 
it is a law applicable to all ; and bring it to bear, with prac- 
tical obligation strict as the Poor-Law Bastille, on all. We 
had then, in good truth, a ' perfect constitution of society ; ' 
and ' God's fair Earth and Task-garden, where whosoever is 
not working must be begging or stealing,' were then actually 
what always, through so many changes and struggles, it is en- 
deavoring to become. 

That this law of No work no recompense, should first of all 
be enforced on the manual worker, and brought stringently 
home to him and his numerous class, while so many other 
classes and persons still go loose from it, was natural to the 



NEW POOR-LAW. 1'-) 

case. Let it be enforced there, and rigidly made good. It 
behoves to be enforced everywhere, and rigidly made good ; — 
alas, not by such simple methods as 'refusal of outdoor re- 
Uef,' but by far other and costlier ones ; which too, however, 
a bountiful Providence is not unfurnished with, nor, in these 
latter generations (if we will understand their convulsions and 
confusions), sparing to apply. Work is the mission of man 
in this Earth. A day is ever struggling forward, a day will 
arrive in some approximate degree, when he who has no work 
to do, by whatever name he may be named, will not find it 
good to show himself in our quarter of the Solar System ; but 
maj^ go and look out elsewhere. If there be any Idle Planet 
discoverable ? — Let the honest working man rejoice that such 
law, the first of Nature, has been made good on him ; and 
hope that, by and by, aU else will be made good. It is the 
beginning of all. We define the harsh New Poor-Law to be 
withal a ' protection of the thrifty labourer against the thrift- 
less and dissolute ; ' a thing inexj)ressibly important ; a half- 
result, detestable, if you will, when looked upon as the whole 
result ; yet without which the whole result is forever unat- 
tainable. Let wastefulness, idleness, drunkenness, improvi- 
dence take the fate which God has appointed them ; that 
their opposites may also have a chance for theu^ fate. Let the 
Poor-Law Administrators be considered as useful labourers 
Avliom Nature has furnished with a whole theory of the uni- 
verse, that they might accomphsh an indispensable fractional 
practice there, and prosper in it in spite of much contradic- 
tion. 

We will praise the New Poor-Law, farther, as the probable 
preliminary of some general charge to be taken of the lowest 
classes by the higher. Any general charge whatsoever, rather 
than a conflict of charges, varying from parish to parish ; the 
emblem of darkness, of unreadable confusion. Supervisal by 
the central government, in what spirit soever executed, is 
supervisal from a centre. By degrees the object will become 
clearer, as it is at once made thereby universally conspicuous. 
By degrees true vision of it Avill become attainable, will be 
universally attained ; whatsoever order regarding it is just 



20 CHABTI8M. 

and wise, as grounded on the truth of it, will then be capable 
of being taken. Let us welcome the New Poor-Law as the 
harsh beginning of much, the harsh ending of much ! Most 
harsh and barren lies the new ploughers' fallow-field, the 
crude subsoil all turned up, which never saw the sun ; which 
as yet grows no herb ; which has ' out-door relief ' for no one. 
Yet patience : innumerable weeds and corruptions lie safely 
turned down and extinguished under it ; this same crude 
subsoil is the first step of all true husbandry ; by Heaven's 
blessing and the skyey influences, fruits that are good and 
blessed will yet come of it. 

Foi", in truth, the claim of the poor labourer is something 
quite other than that ' Statute of the Forty-third of Eliza- 
beth ' will ever fulfil for him. Not to be supported by rounds- 
men systems, by never so liberal parish doles, or lodged in 
free and easy workhouses when distress overtakes him ; not 
for this, however in words he may clamour for it ; not for 
this, but for something far different does the heart of him 
struggle. It is 'for justice' that he struggles; for 'just 
wages,' — not in money alone ! An ever-toiling inferior, he 
would fain (though as yet he knows it not) find for himself a 
superior that should lovingly and wisely govern : is not that 
too the 'just wages' of his service done? It is for a manlike 
place and relation, in this world where he sees himself a man, 
that he struggles. At bottom may we not say it is even for 
this, That guidance and government, which he cannot give 
himself, which in our so complex world he can no longer do 
without, might be afforded him ? The thing he struggles for 
is one which no Forty-third of Elizabeth is in any condition 
to furnish him, to put him on the road towards getting. Let 
him quit the Forty-third of Elizabeth altogether ; and rejoice 
that the Poor-Law Amendment Act has, even by harsh meth- 
ods and against his own will, forced him away from it. That 
was a broken reed to lean on, if there ever was one ; and did 
but run into his lamed right-hand. Let him cast it far from 
him, that' broken reed, and look to quite the opposite point 
of the heavens for help. His unlamed right-hand, with the 
cunning industry that lies in it, is not this defined to be ' the 



FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD. 21 

sceptre of our Planet ' ? He that can work is a born king of 
something ; is in communion with Nature, is master of a thing 
or things, is a priest and king of Nature so far. He that can 
work at nothing is but a usurping king, be his trappings what 
they may ; he is the born slave of all things. Let a man 
honour his craftsmanship, his can-do ; and know that his 
rights of man have no concern at all with the Forty-third of 
Elizabeth. 



CHAPTER IV. 

FINEST PEASANTEY I>r THE WOKLD. 

The Nev/ Poor-Law is an announcement, sufficiently dis- 
tinct, that whosoever will not work ought not to live. Can 
the poor man that is willing to work, always find work, and 
live by his work ? Statistic Inquiry, as we saw, has no an- 
swer to give. Legislation presupposes the answer — to be in 
the affirmative. A large postulate ; which sh,ould have been 
made a proposition of ; which should have been demonstrated, 
made indubitable to all persons ! A man vpilling to work, and 
unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that Fort- 
une's inequality exhibits under this sun. Burns expresses 
feehngly what thoughts it gave him ; a poor man seeking 
work ; seeking leave to toil that he might be fed and shel- 
tered ! That he might be put on a level with the four-footed 
workers of the Planet which is his ! There is not a horse 
wilhng to work but can get food and shelter in requital ; a 
thing this two-footed worker has to seek for, to solicit occa- 
sionally in vain. He is nobody's two-footed worker ; he is not 
even anybody's slave. And yet he is a two-iooied. worker ; 
it is currently reported there is an immortal soul in him, sent 
down out of Heaven into the Earth ; and one beholds him 
seeking for this ! — Nay what will a wise Legislature say, if it 
turn out that he cannot find it ; that the answer to their pos- 
tulate proposition is not affirmative but negative ? 

There is one fact which Statistic Science has communicated, 
and a most astonishing one ; the infei-ence from which is preg- 
nant as to this matter, Ireland has near seven- milhons of 



22 GHARriSM. 

working people, the third unit of whom, it appears by Statis- 
tic Science, has not for thirty weeks each year as many third- 
rate potatoes as will suffice him. It is a fact perhaps the most 
eloquent that was ever written down in any language, at any 
date of the world's history. Was change and reformation 
needed in Ireland ? Has Ireland been governed and guided 
in a ' wise and loving ' manner ? A government and guidance 
of white European men which has issued in perennial hun- 
ger of potatoes to the third man extant, — ought to drop a 
veil over its face, and walk out of court under conduct of 
proper officers ; saying no word ; expecting now of a surety 
sentence either to change or die. All men, we must repeat, 
were made by God, and have immortal souls in them. The 
Sanspotatoe is of the selfsame stuff as the superfinest Lord 
Lieutenant. Not an individual Sanspotatoe human scarecrow 
but had a Life given him out of Heaven, with Eternities de- 
pending on it ; for once and no second time. With Immensi- 
ties in him, ovej" him and round him ; with feelings which a 
Shakspeare's speech would not utter ; with desires illimitable 
as the Autocrat's of all the Kussias ! Him various thrice- 
honoured persons, things and institutions have long been 
teaching, long been guiding, governing : and it is to perpetual 
scarcity of third-rate potatoes, and to what depends thereon, 
that he has been taught and guided. Figure thyself, O high- 
minded, clear-headed, clean-burnished reader, clapt by en- 
chantment into the torn coat and waste hunger-lair of that 
same root-devouring brother man ! — 

Social anomalies are things to be defended, things to be 
amended ; and in all places and things, short of the Pit itself, 
there is some admixture of worth and good. Eoom for ex- 
tenuation, for pity, for patience ! And yet when the general 
result has come to the length of perennial starvation, — yes, 
then argument, extenuating logic, pity and patience on that 
subject may be considered as drawing to a close. It may be 
considered that such arrangement of things will have to termi- 
nate. That it has all just men for its natural enemies. That 
all just men, of what outward colour soever in Politics or 
otherwise, will say : This cannot last, Heaven disowns it. 



FINEST PEASANTRY IN TEE WORLD. 23 

Earth is against it ; Ireland will be burnt into a black unpeo- 
pled field of ashes rather than this should last. — The woes of 
Ireland, or 'justice to Ireland,' is not the chapter we have to 
write at present. It is a deep matter, an abysmal one, which 
no plummet of ovirs will sound. For the oppression has gone 
far farther than into the economies of Ireland ; inwards to her 
very heart and soul. The Irish National character is degraded, 
disordered ; till this recover itself, nothing is yet recovered. 
Immethodic, headlong, violent, mendacious ; what can you 
make of the wretched Irishman? "A finer j)eople never 
lived," as the Irish lady said to us ; " only they have two faults, 
they do generally lie and steal : barring these'" — ! A people 
that knows not to speak the truth, and to act the truth, such 
people has departed from even the possibility of well-being. 
Such people works no 'longer on Nature and Keality ; works 
now on Fantasm, Simulation, Nonentity ; the result it arrives 
at is naturally not a thing but no-thing, — defect even of po- 
tatoes. Scarcity, futility, confusion, distraction must be peren- 
nial there. Such a people circulates not order but disorder, 
through every vein of it ; — and the cure, if it is to be a cvire, 
must begin at the heart : not in his condition only but in him- 
self must the Patient be all changed. Poor Ireland ! And yet 
let no true Irishman, who believes and sees all this, despair 
by reason of it. Cannot he too do something to withstand 
the unproductive falsehood, there as it lies accursed around 
him, and change it into truth, which is fruitful and blessed ? 
Every mortal can and shall himself be a true man : it is a great 
thing, and the parent of great things ; — as from a single acorn 
the whole earth might in the end be peopled with oaks ! 
Every mortal can do something : this let him faithfully do, 
and leave with assured heart the issue to a Higher Power ! 

We English pay, even now, the bitter smart of long centu- 
ries of injustice to our neighbour Island. Injustice, doubt it 
not, abounds ; or Ireland would not be miserable. The Earth 
is good, bountifully sends food and increase ; if man's unwis- 
dom did not intervene and forbid. It was an evil day when 
Strigul first meddled with that people. He could not extir- 
pate them : could they but have agreed together, and extir- 



24 CHARTISM. 

pated him ! Violent men there Lave been, and merciful ; un- 
just rulers, and just ; conflicting in a great element of violence, 
these five wild centuries now ; and the violent and unjust have 
carried it, and we are come to this. England is guilty towards 
Ireland ; and reaps at last, in full measure, the fruit of fifteen 
generations of wrong-doing. 

But the thing we had to state here was our inference from 
that mournful fact of- the third Sanspotatoe,- — coupled with 
this other well-known fact that the Irish speak a partially in- 
telligible dialect of English, and their fare across by steam is 
four-pence sterling ! Crowds of miserable Irish darken all 
our towns. The wild Milesian features, looking false inge- 
nuity, restlessness, unreason, misery and mockery, salute you 
on all highways and by-ways. The English coachman, as he 
whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses him with 
his tongue ; the Milesian is holding out his hat to beg. He is 
the sorest evil this country has to strive with. In his rags and 
laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all work that can 
be done by mere strength of hand and back ; for wages that 
Avill purchase him potatoes. He needs only salt for condi- 
ment ; he lodges to his mind in any pighutch or doghutch, 
roosts in outhouses ; and wears a suit of tatters, the getting 
off and on of which is said^ to be a difficult operation, trans- 
acted only in festivals and the hightides of the calendar. The 
Saxon man if he cannot work on these terms, finds no work. 
He too may be ignorant ; but he has not sunk from decent 
manhood to squalid apehood : he cannot continue there. 
American forests lie uutilled across the ocean ; the uncivilised 
Irishman, not by his strength but by the opposite of strength, 
drives out the Saxon native, takes possession in his room. 
There abides he, in his squalor and unreason, in his falsity 
and drunken violence, as the ready-made nucleus of degra- 
dation and disorder. Whosoever struggles, swimming with 
difficulty, may now find an example how the human being can 
exist not swimming but sunk. Let him sink ; he is not the 
worst of men ; not worse than this man. We have quarentines 
against pestilence ; but there is no pestilence like that ; and 
against it what quarentine is possible ? It is lamentable to look 



FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD. 25 

upon. This soil of Britain, these Saxon men have cleared it, 
made it arable, fertile and a home for them ; they and their 
fathers have done that. Under the sky there exists no force of 
men who with arms in their hands could drive them out of it ; all 
force of men with arms these Saxons would seize, in their grim 
way, and fling (Heaven's justice and their own Saxon humour 
aiding them) swiftly into the sea. But beliold, a force of men 
armed only with rags, ignorance and nakedness ; and the 
Saxon owners, paralysed by invisible magic of paper formula, 
have to fly far, and hide themselves in Transatlantic forests. 
'Irish repeal?' "Would to God," as Dutch William said, 
" You were King of Ireland, and could take yourself and it 
three thousand miles off," — there to repeal it ! 

And yet these poor Celtiberian Irish brothers, what can they 
help it ? They cannot stay at home, and starve. It is just 
and natural that they come hither as a curse to us. Alas, for 
them too it is not a luxury. It is not a strtiight or joyful way 
of avenging their sore wrongs this ; but a most sad circuitous 
one. Yet a way it is, and an effectual way. The time has 
come when the Irish population must either be improved a 
little, or else exterminated. Plausible management, adapted 
to this hollow outcry or to that, wiU no longer do : it must be 
management, grounded on sincerity and fact, to which the 
truth of things will respond — hf an actual beginning of im- 
provement to these wretched brother-men. In a state of per- 
ennial ultra-savage famine, in the midst of civilisation, they 
cannot continue. For that the Saxon British will ever submit 
to sink along with them to such a state, we assume as impos- 
sible. There is in these latter, thank God, an ingenuity which 
is not false ; a methodic spirit, of insight, of perseverant well- 
doing ; a rationality and veracity which Nature with her truth 
does not disown ; — withal there is a ' Berserkir-rage ' in the 
heart of them, which wiU prefer all things, including destruc- 
tion and self-destruction, to that. Let no man awaken it, this 
same Berserkir-rage ! Deep-hidden it lies, far down in the 
centre, like genial central fire, Mdth stratum after stratum 
of arrangement, traditionary method, composed productive- 
ness, all built above it, vivified and rendered fertile by it : 



26 CHARTISM. 

justice, clearness, silence, perseverance, unliasting unresting 
diligence, hatred of disorder, hatred of injustice which is the 
worst disorder, characterise this people ; their inward fire we 
say, as all such fire should be, is hidden at the centre. Deep- 
hidden ; but awakenable, but immeasurable; — let no man 
awaken it ! With tliis strong silent people have the noisy 
vehement Irish now at length got common cause made. Ire- 
laud, now for the first time, in such strange circuitous way, 
does find itself embarked in the same boat with England, to 
sail together or to sink together ; the wretchedness of Ireland, 
slowly but inevitably, has crept over to us, and become our 
own wretchedness. The Irish population must get itself re- 
dressed and saved, for the sake of the English if for nothing 
else. Alas, that it should, on both sides, be poor toiling men 
that pay the smart for unruly Striguls, Plantagenets, Mac- 
dermots, and O'Donoghues ! The strong have eaten sour 
grapes, and the teeth of the weak are set on edge. ' Curses,' 
says the Proverb, 'are like chickens, they return always 
home.' 

But now on the whole, it seems to us, English Statistic Sci- 
ence, with floods of the finest peasantry in the world stream- 
ing in on us daily, may fold up her Danaides reticulations on 
this matter of the Working Classes ; and conclude, what every 
man who will take the statistic spectacles off his nose, and 
look, may discern in town or country : That the condition of 
the lower multitude of English labourers approximates more 
and more to that of the Irish competing with them in all 
markets ; that whatsoever labour, to which mere strength 
with little skill -will suffice, is to be done, will be done not at 
the English price, but at an approximation to the Irish price : 
at a price superior as yet to the Irish, that is, superior to 
scarcity of third-rate potatoes for thirty weeks yearly ; su- 
perior, yet hourly, with the arrival of every new ^ steamboat, 
sinking nearer to an equality with that. Half-a-million hand- 
loom weavers, working fifteen hours a day, in perpetual ina- 
bility to procure thereby enough of the coarsest food ; Eng- 
lish farm-labourers at nine shillings and at seven shillings a 
week ; Scotch farm-labourers who, ' in districts the half of 



FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD 27 

whose husbandry is that of cows, taste no milk, can procure 
no milk ; ' aU these things are credible to us ; several of them 
are known to us by the best evidence, by eyesight. "With all 
this it is consistent that the wages of ' skilled labour,' as it is 
called, should in many cases be higher than they ever were : 
the giant Steam engine in a giant English Nation will here 
create violent demand for labour, and will there annihilate 
demand. But, alas, the great portion is not skilled : the mil- 
lions are and must be skilless, where strength alone is 
wanted ; ploughers, delv'ers, borers ; hewers of wood and 
drawers of water ; menials of the Steam engine only the diief 
menials and immediate 6ot?y- servants of which require skill. 
Enghsh Commerce stretches its fibres over the whole Earth ; 
sensitive literally, nay quivering in convulsion, to the farthest 
influences of the Earth. The huge demon of Mechanism 
smokes and thunders, panting at his great task, in all sections 
of English land ; changing his shape like a very Proteus ; and 
infaUibly at every change of shape, oversetting whole multi- 
tudes of workmen, and as if with the waving of his shadow 
from afar, hurling them asunder, this way and that, in their 
crowded march and course, of work or traffic ; so that the 
wisest no longer knows his whereabout. With an Ireland 
pouring daily in on us, in these circumstances ; deluging us 
down to its own waste confusion, outward and inward, it 
seems a cruel mockery to tell poor drudges that their con- 
dition is improving. . 

New Poor-Law ! Laissez-faire, laisser-passer ! The master 
of horses, when the summer labour is done, has to feed his 
horses through the winter. If he said to his horses : " Quad- 
rupeds, I have no longer work for you ; but work exists 
abundantly over the world : are you ignorant (or must I read 
you Pohtical-Economy Lectures) that the Steamengine always 
in the long-run creates additional work ? Railways are form- 
ing in one quarter of this earth, canals in another, much 
cartage is wanted : somewhere in Europe, Asia, Africa, or 
America, doubt it not, ye wiU find cartage : go and seek 
cartage, and good go with you ! " They with protrusive 
upper lip, snort dubious ; signifying that Europe, Asia, Afiica, 



28 CIIARflSM. 

and America lie somewhat out of their beat : that what cart- 
age may be wanted there is not too well known to them. 
They can find no cartage. They gallop distracted along high- 
ways, all fenced in to the right and to the left : finall}^, under 
pains of hunger, they take to leaping fences ; eating foreign 
property, and — we know the rest. Ah, it is not a joyful 
mirth, it is sadder than tears, the laugh Humanity is forced to, 
at Laissez-faire applied to poor peasants, in a world like our 
Europe of the year 1839 ! 

So much can observation altogether unstatistic, looking only 
at a Drogheda or Dublin steamboat, ascertain for itself. 
Another thing, likewise ascertainable on this vast obscure 
matter, excites a superficial surprise, but only a superficial one : 
That it is the best-paid workmen who, by Strikes, Trades- 
unions, Chartism, and the like, complain the most. No doubt 
of it ! The best-paid workmen are they alone that can so 
complain ! How shall he, the handloom weaver, who in the 
day that is passing over him has to find food for the day, 
strike work ? If he strike work, he starves within the week. 
He is past complaint ! — The fact itself, however, is one which, 
if we consider it, leads us into still deeper regions of the 
malady. Wages, it would appear, are no index of well-being 
to the working man : without proper wages there can be no 
well-being ; but with them also there may be none. Wages 
of working men differ greatly in different quarters of this 
country ; according to the researches or the guess of Mr. 
Symmons, an intelligent humane inquirer, they vary in the 
ratio of not less than three to one. Cotton-sj)inners, as we learn, 
are generally well paid, while employed ; their wages, one 
week with another, wives and children all working, amount to 
sums which, if well laid out, were fully adequate to comfort- 
able living. And yet, alas, there seems little question that 
comfort or reasonable well-being is as much a stranger in 
these households as in any. At the cold hearth of the ever- 
toiling, ever-hungering weaver, dwells at least some equability, 
fixation as if in perennial ice : hope never comes ; but also 
irregular impatience is absent. Of outward things these 
others have or might have enough, but of all inward things 



FINEST PEASANTRY IN THE WORLD. 29 

there is the fatallest lack. Economy does not exist among 
them ; their trade now in plethoric prosperity, anon extenu- 
ated into inanition and ' short-time,' is of the nature of gamb- 
ling ; they live by it like gamblers, now in luxurious super- 
fluity, now in starvation. Black mutinous discontent devours 
them ; simply the miserablest feeling that can inhabit the 
heart of man. English Commerce with its world-wide con- 
vulsive fluctuations, with its immeasurable Proteus Steam- 
demon, makes all paths uncertain for them, all life a bewilder- 
ment : sobriety, steadfastness, peaceable continuance, the first 
blessings of man, are not theirs. 

It is in Glasgow among that class of operatives that ' Num- 
ber 60,' in his dark room, pays down the price of blood. Be 
it with reason or with unreason, too surely they do in verity 
find the time all out of joint ; this world for them no home, 
but a dingy prison-house of reckless unthrift, rebellion, ran- 
cour, indignation against themselves and against all men. Is 
it a green flowery world, with azure everlasting sky stretched 
over it, the work and government of a God ; or a murky-sim- 
mering Tophet, of copperas-fumes, cotton-fuz, gin-riot, wrath 
and toil, created by a Demon, governed by a Demon ? The 
sum of their wretchedness merited and unmerited welters, 
huge, dark and baleful, like a Dantean Hell, visible there in 
the statistics of Gin : Gin justly named the most authentic 
incarnation of the Infernal Principle in our times, too indis- 
putable an incarnation ; Gin the black throat into which 
wretchedness of every sort, consummating itself by calling 
on delirium to help it, whirls down ; abdication of the power 
to think or resolve, as too painful now, on the part of men 
whose lot of all others would require thought and resolution ; 
liquid Madness sold at ten-pence the quartern, all the products 
of which are and must be, like its origin, mad, miserable, 
ruinous, and that only ! If from this black unluminous un- 
heeded Inferno, and Prisonhouse of souls in pain, there do 
flash up from time to' time, some dismal wide-spread glare of 
Chartism or the like, notable to all, claiming remedy from all, 
— are we to regard it as more baleful than the quiet state, or 
rather as not so baleful ? Ireland is in chronic atrophy these 



30 CHABTISM. 

five centuries ; the disease of nobler England, identified now 
with that of Ireland, becomes acute, has crises, and will be 
cured or kill. 



CHAPTER V. 

EIGHTS AND MIGHTS. 



It is not what a man outwardly has or wants that constitutes 
the happiness or misery of him. Nakedness, hunger, distress 
of all kinds, death itself have been cheerfully suffered, when 
the heart was right. It is the feeling of injustice that is insup- 
portable to all men. The bru tallest black African cannot bear 
that he should be used unjustly. No man can bear it, or ought 
to bear it. A deeper law than any parchment-law whatsoever, 
a law ■\;\T.itten direct by the hand of God in the inmost being 
of man, incessantly protests against it. What is injustice ? 
Another name for cZisorder, for unveracity, unreality ; a thing 
which veracious created Nature, even because it is not Chaos 
and a waste-whirling baseless Phantasm, rejects and disowns. 
It is not the outward pain of injustice ; that, were it even the 
flaying of the back with knotted scourges, the severing; of 
the head with guillotines, is comparatively a small matter. 
The real smart is the soul's pain and stigma, the hurt inflicted 
on the moral self. "'The rudest clown must draw himself up 
into attitude of battle, and resistance to the death, if such be 
offered him. He cannot live under it ; his own soul aloud, 
and all the universe with silent continual beckonings, says. It 
cannot be. He must revenge himself ; revancJier himself, make 
himself good again, — that so meum may be mine, tuum thine, 
and each iDarty standing clear on his own basis, order be re- 
stored. There is something inflnitely respectable in this, and 
we may say universally resjDCcted : it is the common stamp of 
manhood vindicating itself in all of us, the basis of whatever 
is worthy in all of us, and through superficial diversities, the 
same in all. 

As (disorder, insane by the nature of it, is the hatefuUest of 
things to man, who lives by sanity and order, so injustice is 
the worst evil, some call it the only evil, in this world. AU 



EIGHTS AND MIGHTS. 31 

men submit to toil, to disappointment, to unhappiness ; it is 
their lot here ; but in all hearts, inextinguishable by sceptic 
logic, by sorrow, perversion or despair itself, there is a small 
still voice intimating that it is not the final lot ; that wild, 
waste, incoherent as it looks, a God presides over it ; that it 
is not an injustice but a justice. Force itself, the hopeless- 
ness of resistance, has doubtless a composing effect ; — against 
inanimate Simooms, and much other infliction of the like sort, 
we have found it suffice to produce complete composure. Yet, 
one would say, a permanent Injustice even from an Infinite 
Power w^ould prove unendurable by men. If men had lost 
belief in a God, their only resource against a blind No-God, 
of Necessity and Mechanism, that held them like a hideous 
World-Steamengine, like a hideous Plialaris' Bull, imprisoned 
in its own iron belly, would be, with or without hope, — revolt. 
They could, as Novalis says, by a ' simultaneous universal act 
of suicide,' depart out of the World-Steamengine ; and end, if 
not in victory, yet in invincibilit}', and unsubduable protest 
that such World-Steamengine was a failure and a stupidity. 

Conquest, indeed, is a fact often witnessed ; conquest, which 
seems mere wrong and force, everywhere asserts itself as a 
right among men. Yet if we examine, we shall find that, in 
this world, no conquest could ever become permanent, which 
did not withal shew itself beneficial to the conquered . as 
well as to conquerors. Mithridates King of Pontus, come 
now to extremity, ' appealed to the patriotism of his people ; ' 
but, says the histor}', ' he had squeezed them, and fleeced and 
plundered them, for long years ;' his requisitions, flying ir- 
regular, devastative, like the whirlwind, were less supportable 
than Roman strictness and method, regular though never so 
rigorous ; he therefore appealed to their patriotism in vain. 
The Romans conquered Mithridates. The Romans, having 
conquered the world, held it conquered, because they could 
best govern the world ; the mass of men found it nowise press- 
ing to revolt ; their fancy might be afflicted more or less, but 
in their solid interests they were better off than before. So 
too in this England long ago, the old Saxon Nobles, disunited 
among themselves, and in power too nearly equal, could not 



32 CRARTISM. 

have governed the country well ; Harold being slain, their last 
chance of governing it, except in anarchy and civil war, was 
over ; a new class of strong Norman Nobles, entering with a 
strong man, with a succession of strong men at the head of 
them, and not disunited, but united by many ties, by their 
very community of language and interest, had there been no 
other, toCT'e in a condition to govern it ; and did govern it, we 
can believe, in some rather tolerable manner, or they would 
not have continued there. They acted, little conscious of such 
function on their part, as an immense volunteer Police Force, 
stationed everywhere, united, disciplined, feudally regimented, 
ready for action ; strong Teutonic men ; who on the whole 
proved effective men, and drilled this wild Teutonic people into 
unity and peaceable co-operation better than others could have 
done ! How can-do, if we will well interpret it, unites itself 
with shall-do among mortals ; how strength acts ever as the 
right-arm of justice ; how might and right, so frightfully dis- 
crepant at first, are ever in the long-run one and the same, — 
is a cheering consideration, which always in the black tem- 
pestuous vortices of this world's history, will shine out on us, 
like an everlasting polar star. 

Of conquest we may say that it never yet went by brute 
force and compulsion ; conquest of that kind does not endiu'e. 
Conquest, along with power of compulsion, an essential uni- 
versally in human society, must bring benefit along with it, 
or men, of the ordinary strength of men, will fling it out. 
The strong man, what is he if we will consider ? The wise 
man ; the man with the gift of method, of faithfulness and 
valour, all of which are of the basis of wisdom ; who has in- 
sight into what is what, into what will follow out of what, the 
eye to se© and the hand to do ; who is fit to administer, to di- 
rect, and guidingiy command : he is the strong man. His 
muscles and bones are no stronger than ours ; but his soul is 
stronger, his soul is wiser, clearer, — is better and nobler, for that 
is, has been, and ever will be the root of all clearness worthy of 
such a name. Beautiful it is, and a gleam from the same 
eternal pole-star visible amid the destinies of men, that all 
talent, all intellect is in the first place moral ; — what a world 



RIGHTS AND MIGHTS. 33 

were this otherwise ! But it is the heart always that sees, be- 
fore the head can see : let us know that ; and know therefore 
that the Good alone is deathless and victorious, that Hope is 
siire and steadfast, in all phases of this 'Place of Hope.' — 
Shiftiness, quirk, attorney-cunning is a kind of thing that fan- 
cies itself, and is often fancied, to be talent ; but it is luckily 
mistaken in that. Succeed truly it does, what is called succeed- 
ing ; and even must in general succeed, if the dispensers of 
success be of due stupidity : men of due stupidity will needs 
say to it, " Thou art wisdom, rule thou ! " — Whereupon it 
rules. But Nature answers, "No, this ruling of thine is not 
according to omj laws ; thy wisdom was not wise enough ! 
Dost thou take me too for a Quackery? For a Convention- 
ality and Attorneyism ? This chaff that thou sowest into my 
bosom, though it pass at the poll-booth and elsewhere for 
seed-corn, / will not grow wheat out of it, for it is chaff ! " 

But to return. Injustice, infidelity to truth and fact and 
Nature's order, being properly the one evil under the sun, and 
the feeling of injustice the one intolerable pain under the sun, 
our grand question as to the condition of these working men 
would be : Is it just ? And first of all. What belief have they 
themselves formed about the justice of it ? The words they 
promulgate are notable by way of answer ; their actions are 
still more notable. Chartism with its pikes. Swing with his 
tinder-box, speak a most loud though inarticulate language. 
Glasgow Thuggery sjDeaks aloud too, in a language we may 
well call infernal. What kind of ' wild-justice ' must it be in 
the hearts of these men that prompts them, with cold delib- 
eration, in conclave assembled, to doom their brother work- 
man, as the deserter of his order and his order's cause, to die 
as a traitor and deserter ; and have him executed, since not 
by any public judge and hangman, then by a private one ; — 
like your old Chivalry Femgericht, and Secret-Tribunal, sud- 
denly in this strange guise become new ; suddenty rising 
once more on the astonished eye, dressed now not in mail- 
shirts but in fustian jackets, meeting not in Westphalian for- 
ests but in the paved Gallowgate of Glasgow ! Not loyal lov- 
ing obedience to those placed over them, but a far other 



34 CHARTISM. 

temper, must animate these men ! It is frightful enough. 
Such temper must be wide-spread, virulent among the many, 
Tvhen even in its worst acme, it can take such a form in a few. 
But indeed decay of loyalty in all senses, disobedience, decay 
of religious faith, has long been noticeable and lamentable in 
this largest class, as in other smaller ones. Revolt, sullen re- 
vengeful humour of revolt against the upper classes, decreasing 
respect for what their temporal superiors command, decreasing 
faith for what their spiritual superiors teach, is more and more 
the universal spirit of the lower classes. Such spirit may be 
blamed, may be vindicated ; but all men must recognize it as 
extant there, all may knoAv that it is mournful, that unless 
altered it will be fatal. Of lower classes so related to upper, 
happy nations are not made ! To whatever other griefs the 
lower classes labour under, this bitterest and sorest grief now 
superadds itself ; the unendurable conviction that they are 
unfairly dealt with, that their lot in this world is not founded 
on right, not even on necessity and might, is neither what it 
should be, nor what it shall be. 

Or why do we ask of Chartism, Glasgow Trades-Unions, and 
such like ? Has not broad Europe heard the question, put, 
and answered, on the great scale ; has not a French Revolution 
been ? Since the year 1789, there is now half-a-century com- 
plete ; and a French Revolution not yet complete ! Whoso- 
ever will look at that enormous Phenomenon may find many 
meanings in it, but this meaning as the ground of all : That it 
was a revolt of the oppressed lower classes against the oppress- 
ing or neglecting upper classes : not a French revolt only ; 
no, a European one ; full of stern monition to all conntries of 
Europe. These Chartisms, Radicalisms, Reform Bill, Tithe 
Bill, and infinite other discrepancy, and acrid argument and 
jargon that there is yet to be, are our French Revolution : God 
grant that we with our better methods, may be able to trans- 
act it by argument alone ! 

The Fx-ench Revolution, now that we have sufficiently ex- 
ecrated its horrors and crimes, is found to have had withal a 
great meaning in it. As indeed, what great thing ever hap- 
pened in this world, a world understood always to be mac & 



RIGHTS AND MIGHTS. 35 

and governed by a Providence and Wisdom, not by an Un- 
wisdom, without meaning somewhat ? It was a tolerably 
audible voice of proclamation, and universal oyez ! to all peo- 
ple, this of three-and-twenty years' close fighting, sieging, 
conflagrating, with a anillion or tAvo of men shot dead : the 
world ought to know by this time that it was verily meant in 
earnest, that same Phenomenon, and had its own reasons for 
appearing there ! Which accordingly the world begins now 
to do. The French Revolution is seen, or begins everywhere 
to be seen, ' as the crowning phenomenon of our Modern 
' Time ; the ine\itable stern end of much ; the fearful;, but also 
' wonderful, indispensable and sternly beneficent beginning of 
' much.' He who would understand the struggling convulsive 
unrest of European societ}', in any and everj' country, at this 
day, may read it in broad glaring lines there, in that the most 
convulsive phenomenon of the last thousand years. Europe 
lay pining, obstructed, moribund ; qi;ack-ridden, hag-ridden, 
— is there a hag, or spectre of the Pit, so baleful, hideous as 
your accredited quack, were he never so close-shaven, mild- 
spoken, plausible to himself and others ? Quack-ridden : in 
that one word lies all misery whatsoever. Sj^eciosity in all 
departments usurps the place of reality, thrusts reality away ; 
instead of performance, there is appearance of performance. 
The quack is a Falsehood Incarnate ; and speaks, and makes 
and does mere falsehoods, which Nature with her veracity has 
to disown. As chief priest, as chief governor, he stands there, 
intrusted with much. The husbandman of ' Time's Seedfield ; ' 
he is the world's hired sower, hired and solemnly ai^pointed 
to sow the kind true earth with wheat this yeai', that next 
year all men may have bread. He, miserable mortal, deceiv- 
ii]g and self-deceiving, sows it, as we said, not with corn but 
Avitli chaff ; the world nothing doubting, hari'ows it in, pays 
him his wages, dismisses him with blessing, and — next year 
there has no corn sprung. Nature has disowned the chaff, 
has declined growing chaff', and behold now there is no bread ! 
It becomes necessar_y, in such case, to do several things : not 
soft things some of them, but hard. 

Nay we will add that the very circumstance of quacks in 



36 - VHAETISM. 

unusual quantity getting domination, indicates that the heart 
of the world is already wrong. The impostor is false ; but 
neither are his dupes altogether true : is not his first grand 
dupe the falsest of all, — himself namely ? Sincere men, of 
never so limited intellect, have an instinct for discriminating- 
sincerity. The cunningest Mej)histopheles cannot deceive a 
simple Margaret of honest heart ; ' it stands written on his 
brow.' Masses of people capable of being led away b}' quacks 
are themselves of partially untrue spirit, Alas, in such times 
it grows to be the universal belief, sole accredited knowing- 
ness, and the contrary of it accounted puerile enthusiasm, this 
sorrowfuUest disheliet that there is properly speaking any 
truth in the world ; that the world was, has been, or ever can 
be guided, except by simulation, dissimulation, and the suf- 
ficiently dexterous practice of pretence. The faith of men is 
dead : in what has guineas in its pocket, beefeaters riding be- 
hind it, and cannons trundling before it, they can believe ; in 
what has none of these things they cannot believe. Sense for 
the true and false is last ; there is properly no longer any true 
or false. It is the heyday of Imposture ; of Semblance recog- 
nising itself, and getting itself recognised, for Substance. 
Gaping multitudes listen ; unlistening multitudes see not but 
that it is all right, and in the order of Nature. Earnest men, 
one of a million, shut their lij)S ; suppressing thoughts, which 
there are no words to utter. To them it is too visible that 
spiritual life has departed ; that mateiial life, in whatsoever 
figure of it, cannot long remain behind. To them it seems as 
if our Europe of the Eighteenth Century, long hag-ridden, 
vexed with foul enchanters, to the length now of gorgeous 
Domdaniel Farcs-aux-cerfs and ' Peasants living on meal-husks 
and boiled grass,' had verily sunk down to die and dissolve ; 
and were now, with its French Philosophisms, Hume Scepti- 
cisms, Diderot Atheisms, maundering in the -final deliration ; 
writhing, with its Seven-years Silesian I'obber-wars, in the 
final agony. Glory to God, our Europe was not to die but to 
live ! Our Europe rose like a frenzied giant ; shook all that 
poisonous magician trumpery to right «and left, trampling it 
stormfuUy under foot ; and declared aloud that there was 



BIGHTS AND MIGHTS. 37 

strength in him, not for life only, but for new and infinitely- 
wider life. Antseus-like the giant had strvick his foot once 
more upon Keality and the Earth ; there only, if in this uni- 
verse at all, lay strength and healing for him. Heaven knows, 
it was not a gentle process ; no wonder that it was a fearful 
process, this same ' Phoenix fire-consummation ! ' But the 
alternative was this or death ; the merciful Heavens, merciful 
in their severity, sent us this rather. 

And so the ' rights of man ' were to be written down on 
paper ; and experimentally wrought upon towards elaboration, 
in huge battle and wrestle, element conflicting with element, 
from side to side of this Earth, for three-and-twenty years. 
Rights of man, wrongs of man ? It is a question which has 
swallowed whole nations and generations ; a question — on 
which we will not enter here. Far be it from us ! Logic has 
small business with this question at present ; logic has no 
plummet that will sound it at any time. But indeed the 
rights of man, as has been not unaptly remarked, are little 
worth ascertaining in comparison to the mights of man, — to 
what portion of his rights he has any chance of being able to 
make good ! The accurate final rights of man lie in the far 
deeps of the Ideal, where ' the Ideal weds itself to the Possi- 
ble,' as the Philosophers say. The ascertainable temporary 
rights of man vary not a little, according to place and time. 
They are known to depend much on what a man's convictions 
of them are. The Highland wife, with her husband at the 
foot of the gallows, patted him on the shoulder (if there be 
historical truth in Joseph Miller), and said amid her tears : 
" Go up, Donald, my man ; the Laird bids ye." To her it 
seemed the rights of lairds were great, the rights of men 
small ; and she acquiesced. Deputy LajDonle, in the Salle des 
Melius at Versailles, on the 4th of August, 1789, demanded 
(be did actually ' demand,' and by unanimous vote obtain) 
that the ' obsolete law ' authorizing a Seigneur, on his return 
from the chase or other needful fatigue, to slaughter not 
above two of his vassals, and refresh his feet in their warm 
blood and bowels, should be ' abrogated.' From such obso- 
lete law, or mad tradition and phantasm of an obsolete law. 



38 CHARTISM. 

down to any corn-law, game-law, rotten- borough law, or other 
law or practice clamoured of in this time of ours, the distance 
travelled over is great ! — What are the rights of men ? All 
men are justified in demanding and searching for their rights ; 
moreover, justified or not, they will do it : by Chartisms, 
Radicalisms, French Revolutions, or whatsoever methods they 
have. Rights surely are right : on the other hand, this other 
saying is most true, ' Use every man according to his rightH, 
and who shall escape whipping ! ' These two things, we say, 
are both true ; and both are essential to make up the whole 
truth. All good men know always and feel, each for himself, 
that the one is not less true than the other ; and act accord- 
ingly. The contradiction is of the surface only ; as in oppo- 
site sides of the same fact : universal in this dualism of a life 
we have. Between these two extremes. Society and all human 
things must fiuctuatingly adjust themselves the best they can. 
And yet that there is verily a 'rights of man' let no mortal 
doubt. An ideal of right does dwell in all men, in all arrange- 
ments, pactions and procedures of men ; it is to this ideal of 
right, more and more developing itself as it is more and more 
approximated to, that human Society for ever tends and strug- 
gles. We say also that any given thing either is unjust or 
else just ; however obscure the arguings and strugglings on it 
be, the thing in itself there as it lies, infallibly enough, is the 
one or the othei". To which let us add only this, the first, 
last article of faith, the alpha and omega of all faith among 
men. That nothing which is unjust can hope to continue in 
this world. A faith true in all times, more or less forgotten 
in most, but altogether frightfully brought to remembrance 
again in ours ! Lyons fusilladings, Nantes noyadings, reigns 
of terror, and such other universal battle-thunder and exjDlo- 
sion ; these, if we will understand them, were but a new irre- 
fragable preaching abroad of that. It would apjDear that 
Speciosities which are not Realities cannot any longer inhabit 
this world. It would appear that the unjust thing has no 
friend in the Heaven, and a majority against it on the earth ; 
nay, that it has at bottom all men for its enemies ; that it may 
take shelter in this fallacy and then in that, but will be hunted 



LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 39 

from fallacy to fallacy, till it find no fallacy to shelter in any 
more, but must march and go elsewhither ; — that, in a woi'd, 
it ought to prepare incessantly for decent departure, before 
{/(decent departure, ignominious drummiDg out, nay savage 
smiting out and burning out, overtake it ! Alas, was that 
such new tidings ? Is it not from of old indubitable, that 
L^niruth, lujustice wliich is but acted untruth, has no power 
i () continue in this true universe of ours ? The tidiugs was 
world-old, or older, as old as the Fall of Lucifer : and yet in 
that epoch unhappily it was new tidings, unexpected, incredi- 
ble ; and there had to be such earthquakes and shakings of 
^e nations before it could be listened to, and laid to heart 
even slightly ! Let us lay it to heart, let us know it well that 
new shakings be not needed. Known and laid to heart it 
must everywhere be, before peace can pretend to come. This 
seems to us the secret of our convulsed era ; this which is so 
easily written, which is and has been and will be so hard to 
bring to pass. All true men, high and low, each in his sphere, 
are consciously or unconsciously bringing it to pass ; all false 
and half-true men are fruitlessly spending themselves to hin- 
der it from coming. to pass. 



CHAPTER VI. 

LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 

From all which enormous events, with truths old and 
new embodied in them, what innumerable practical infer- 
ences are to be drawn ! Events are written lessons, glaring 
in huge hiei'Oglyphic picture-writing, that all may read and 
know them : the terror and horror they inspire is but the 
note of preparation for the truth they are to teach ; a mere 
waste of terror if that be not learned. Inferences enough ; 
most didactic, practically applicable in all departments of 
English things ! One inference, but one inclusive of all, shall 
content us here ; this namely : That Laissez-faire has as good 
as done its j)art in a great many provinces ; that in the prov- 
ince of the Working Classes, Laissez-faii^e having passed its 



40 CHARTISM. 

New Poor-Law, has reached the suicidal point and now, as 
felo-de-se, lies djdng there, in torchlight meetings and such 
Uke ; that, in brief, a government of the under classes by the 
upper on a principle of Let alone is no longer possible in Eng- 
land in these days. This is the one inference inclusive of alL 
For there can be no acting or doing of any kind, till it be 
recognised that there is a thing to be done ; the thing once 
recognised, doing in a thousand shapes becomes possible. 
The "Working Classes cannot any longer go on without govern- 
ment ; without being actually guided and governed ; England 
cannot subsist in peace till, by some means or othei", some 
guidance and government for them is found. 

For, alas, on us too the rude truth has come home. Wra; 
pages and speciosities all worn off, the haggard naked fact 
speaks to us : Are these millions taught ? Are these millions 
guided ? We have a Church, the venerable embodiment of 
an idea which may well call itself divine ; which our fathers 
for long ages, feeling it to be divine, have been embodying as 
we see : it is a Church well furnished with equipments and 
appurtenances ; educated in universities ; rich in money ; set 
on high places that it may be conspicuous to all, honoured of 
all. We have an Aristocracy of landed wealth and commer- 
cial wealth, in whose hands lies the law-making and the law- 
administering ; an Aristocracy rich, powerful, long secure in 
its place ; an Aristocracy with more faculty put free into its 
hands than was ever before, in any country or time, put into 
the hands of any class of men. This Church answers : Yes, the 
people are taught. This Aristocracy', astonishment in every 
feature, answers : Yes, surely the people are guided ! Do 
we not pass what Acts of Parliament are needful ; as many as 
thirty-nine for the shooting of the partridges alone ? Are there 
not tread-mills, gibbets ; even hospitals, poor-rates, New Poor- 
Law ? So answers Chui'ch ; so answers ^I'istocracy, astonish- 
ment in every feature. — Fact, in the meanwhile, takes Jiis luci- 
fer-box, sets fire to wheat-stacks ; sheds an ail-too dismal light 
on several things. Fact searches for his third-rate potatoe, 
not in the meekest humour, six-and-thirty weeks each 3'ear ; 
and does not find it. Fact passionately joins Messiah Thorn 



LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 4:1 

of Canterbury, and lias himself shot for a new fifth-monarchy 
brought in by Bedlam. Fact holds his fustian-jacket Fein- 
gericht in Glasgow City. Fact carts his Petition over London 
streets, begging that you would simply have the goodness to 
grant him universal suffrage, and ' the five points,' by way of 
remedy. These are not symptoms of teaching and guiding. 

Nay, at bottom, is it not a singular thing- this of Laissez- 
faire, from the first origin of it? As good as an abdication on 
the part of governors ; an admission that they are henceforth 
incompetent to govern, that they are not there to govern at 
all, but to do — one knows not what ! The universal demand 
of Laissez-faire by a people from its governors or upper 
<^''^ses, is a soft-sounding demand ; but it is only one step 
removed from the fatallest. ' Laissez-faire,' exclaims a sar- 
donic German writer, ' What is this universal cry for Laissez- 
'faire ? Does it mean that human affairs require no guid- 
'ance ; that wisdom and forethought cannot guide them bet- 
* ter than folly and accident ? Alas, does it not mean : " Such 
' guidance is worse than none ! Leave us alone of your guid- 
' ance ; eat your wages, and sleep ! " ' And now if guidance 
have grown indispensable, and the sleep continue, what be- 
comes of the sleep and its wages ? — In those entirely surpris- 
ing circumstances to which the Eighteenth Century had 
brought us, in the time of Adam Smith, Laissez-faire was a 
reasonable cry ; — as indeed, in all circumstances, for a wise 
governor there will be meaning in the principle of it. To 
wise governors you will cry : " See what you will, and will 
not, let alone." To unwise governors, to hungry Greeks 
throttling down hungry Greeks on the floor of a St. Stephens, 
you will cry : " Let all things alone ; for Heaven's sake, med- 
dle ye with nothing!" Kovf Laissezfaire may adjust itself 
in other provinces we say not : but we do venture to say, and 
ask whether event^everywhere in world-history and parish- 
history, in all rnanrlr of dialects are not saying it, That in 
regard to the lower orders of society, and their governance and 
guidance, the principle of Laissezfaire has terminated, and is 
no longer applicable at all, in this Europe of ours, still less 
in this England of ours. Not misgovernment, nor yet no- 



42 GHABTISM. 

government : only government will now serve. "What is the 
meaning of the 'five points,' if we will understand them? 
What are all popular commotions and maddest bellowings, 
from Peterloo to the Place-de-Grreve itself? Bellowings, in- 
.articulate cries as of a dumb creature in rage and pain ; to 
the ear of wisdom they are inarticulate prayers : " Guide me, 
>govern me ! I am mad, and miserable, and cannot guide ni}'- 
;self ! " Surely of all ' rights of man,' this right of the igno- 
rant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, 
held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest. Nature 
herself ordains it from the first ; Society struggles towards 
perfection by enforcing and accomplishing it more and more. 
If Freedom have any meaning, it means enjoyment of this 
right, wherein all other rights are enjoyed. It is a sacred 
right and duty, on both sides ; and the summary of all social 
duties whatsoever between the two. Why does the one toil 
with his hands, if the other be not to toil, still more un- 
weariedly, with heart and head ? The brawny craftsman finds 
it no child's play to mould his unpliant rugged masses ; 
neither is guidance of men a dilettantism : what it becomes 
when treated as a delettantism, Ave may see ! The wdld horse 
bounds homeless through the wilderness, is not led to stall 
and manger : but neither does he toil for you, but for himself 
only. 

Democracy, we are well aware, what is called ' self-govern- 
ment' of the multitude by the multitude, is in words the thing 
everywhere passionately clamoured for at present. Democ- 
racy makes rapid progress in these latter times, and ever more 
rapid, in a perilous accelerative ratio ; towards democracy, 
and that only, the progress of things is everywhere tending 
as to the final goal and Avinning-post. So think, so clamour 
the multitudes everywhere. And yet all men may see, Avhose 
sight is good for much, that in democracy can lie no finality ; 
that Avith the completest Avinning of democracy there is noth- 
ing yet won, — except emptiness, and the free chance to win ! 
Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-cancelling business : 
and gives in the long-run a net-result of zero. Where no 
government is wanted, save that of the parish-constable, as in 



LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 4Z 

America with its boundless soil, every man being able to find 
work and recompense for himself, democracy may subsist ; 
not elsewhere, except briefly, as a swift transition towards 
something other and farther. Democracy never yet, that we 
heard of, was able to accomplish much work, beyond that 
same cancelling of itself. Rome and Athens are, themes for 
the schools ; unexceptionable for that purpose. In Rome and 
Athens, as elsewhere, if we look practicalh^, we shall find that 
it was not by loud voting and debating of many, but by wise 
insight and ordei'ing of a few that the work was done. So is 
it ever, so will it ever be. The French Convention was a 
Parliament elected 'by the five points,' with ballot-boxes, uni- 
versal suffrages, and what not, as perfectly as Parliament can 
hope to be in this world ; and had indeed a pretty spell of 
work to do, and did it. The French Convention had to cease 
from being a h'ee Parliament, and become more arbitrary than 
any Sultan Bajazet, before it could so much as subsist. It 
had to purge out its argumentative Girondins, elect its Su- 
preme Committee of Salut, guillotine into silence and extinc- 
tion all that gainsayed it, and rule and work literally by the 
sternest despotism ever seen in Europe, before it could rule 
at all. Napoleon was not president of a republic ; Cromwell 
tried hard to rule in that way, but found that he could not. 
These, ' the armed soldiers of democracy,' had to chain democ- 
racy under their feet, and become despots over it, before they 
could work out the earnest obscure purpose of democi-acy it- 
self ! Democracy, take it where you will in our Europe, is 
found but as a regulated method of rebellion and abrogation ; 
it abrogates the old arrangement of things ; and leaves, as we 
say, zero and vacuity for the institution of a new arrangement. 
It is the consummation of No-government and Laissez-faire. 
It may be natural for our Europe at present ; but cannot be 
the ultimatum of it. Not towards the impossibility, 'self- 
government ' of a multitude by a multitude ; but towards some 
possibility, government by the wisest, does bewildered Europe 
struggle. The blessedest possibility : not misgovernment, 
not Laissez-faire, but veritable govei'nment ! Cannot one dis- 
cern too, across all democratic turbulence, clattering of ballot- 



44 CHARTISM. 

boxes and infinite sorrowful jangle, needful or not, that this 
at bottom is the wish and prayer of all human hearts, every- 
where and at all times : " Give me a leader ; a true leader, not 
a false sham-leader ; a true leader, that he may guide me on 
the true way, that I may be loyal to him, that I may swear 
fealty to him and follow him, and feel that it is well with me ! " 
The relation of the taught to their teacher, of the loyal sub- 
ject to his guiding king, is, under one shape or another, the 
vital element of human Society ; indispensable to it, perennial 
in it ; without which, as a body reft of its soul, it falls down 
into death, and with horrid noisome dissolution passes away 
and disappears. 

But verily in these times, with their new stern Evangel, that 
Speciosities which are not Realities can no longer be, all Aris- 
tocracies, Priesthoods, Persons in Authority, are called upon 
to consider. What is an Aristocracy ? A corporation of the 
Best, of the Bravest. To this joyfully, with heart-loyalty, do 
men pay the half of their substance, to equip and decorate 
their Best, to lodge them in palaces, to set them high over all. 
For it is of the nature of men, in every time, to honour and 
love their Best ; to know no limits in honouring them. What- 
soever Aristocracy is still a corporation of the Best, is safe from 
all peril, and the land it rules is a safe and blessed land. What- 
soever Aristocracy does not even attempt to be that, but only 
to wear the clothes of that, is not safe ; neither is the land it 
rules in safe ! For this now is our sad lot, that we must find 
a real Aristocracy, that an apparent Aristocracy, how plausible 
soever, has become inadequate for us. One way or other, the 
world will absolutely need to be governed ; if not by this class 
of men, then by that. One can predict, without gift of proph- 
ecy, that the era of routine is nearly ended. Wisdom and fac- 
ulty alone, faithful, valiant, ever-zealous, not pleasant but pain- 
ful, continual effort, will suffice. Cost what it may, by one 
means or another, the toiling multitudes of this perplexed 
over-crowded Europe, must and will find governors. ' Laissez- 
faire, Leave them to do ? ' The thing they will do, if so left, 
is too frightful to think of ! It has been done once, in sight 



LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 45 

of the whole earth, in these generations ; can it need to be 
done a second time ? 

For a Priesthood, in like manner, whatsoever its titles, pos- 
sessions, professions, there is but one question : does it teach 
and spiritually guide this people, yea or no ? If yea, then is 
all well. But if no, then let it strive earnestly to alter, for as 
yet there is nothing well ! Nothing, we say : and indeed is not 
this that we call spiritual guidance properly the soul of the 
whole, the life and eyesight of the whole ? The world asks of 
its Church in these times, more passionately than of any other 
Institution any question, " Canst thou teach us or not ? " — A 
Priesthood in France, when the world asked, " What canst 
thou do for us ? " answered only, aloud and ever louder, " Are 
we not of God ? Invested with all power ? " — till at length 
France cut short this controversy too, in what frightful way 
we know. To all men who believed in the Church, to all men 
who believed in God and the soul of man, there was no issue 
of the French Revolution half so sorrowful as that. France 
cast out its benighted blind Priesthood into destruction ; yet 
with what a loss to France also ! A solution of continuity, 
what we may well call such ; and this where continuity is so 
momentous : the New, whatever it may be, cannot now grow 
out of the Old, but is severed sheer asunder from the Old, — 
how much lies wasted in that gap ! That one whole genera- 
tion of thinkers should be without a religion to believe, or 
even to contradict ; that Christianity, in thinking France, 
should as it were fade away so long into a remote extraneous 
tradition, was one of the saddest facts connected with the 
future of that country. Look at such Political and Moral 
Philosophies, St.-Simonisms, Robert-Macairisms, and the 'Lit- 
erature of Desperation ' ! Kingship was perhaps but a cheap 
waste, compared with this of the Prrestship ; under which 
France still, all but unconsciously, labours ; and may long la- 
bour, remediless the while. Let others consider it, and take 
warning by it ! France is a pregnant examjDle in all ways. 
Aiistocracies that do not govern, Priesthoods that do not 
teach ; the misery of that, and the misery of altering that, — 
are written in Belshazzar fire-letters on the history of France. 



46 CHARTISM. 

Or does the British reader, safe in the assurance that ' Ebg:, 
land is not France,' call all this unpleasant doctrine of ours 
ideology, pei'fectability, and a vacant dream ? Does the Brit- 
ish reader, resting on the faith that what has been these two 
generations was from the beginning, and will be to the end, 
assert to himself that things are already as they can be, as 
they must be ; that on the whole, no Upper Classes did ever 
' govern ' the Lowei', in this sense of governing ? Believe it 
not, O British reader ! Man is man everywhere ; dislikes to 
have ' sensible species ' and ' ghosts of defunct bodies ' foisted 
on him, in England even as in France. How much the Upper 
Classes did actually, in any of the most perfect Feudal time, 
return to the Under by way of recompense, in government, 
guidance, protection, we will not undertake to specify here. 
In Charity-Balls, Soup-Kitchens, in Quarter-Sessions, Prison- 
Discipline and Treadmills, we can well believe the old Feudal 
Aristocracy not to have surpassed the new. Yet we do say 
that the old Aristocracy were the governors of the Lower 
Classes, the guides of the Lower Classes ; and even, at bottom, 
that they existed as an Aristocracy because they were found 
adequate for that. Not by Charity-Balls and Soup-Kitchens ; 
not so ; far otherwise ! But it was their happiness that, in 
struggling for their own objects, they AacZ to govern the LoAver 
Classes, even in this sense of governing. For, in one word. 
Gash Payment had not then grown to be the universal sole 
nexus of man to man ; it was something other than money 
that the high then expected from the low, and could not live 
without getting from the low. Not as buyer and seller alone, 
of land or what else it might be, but in many senses still as 
soldier and captain, as clansman and head, as loyal subject 
and guiding king, was the low related to the high. With the 
supreme triumph of Cash, a changed time has entered ; there 
must a changed Aristocracy enter. We invite the British 
reader to meditate earnestly on these things. 

Another thing, which the British reader often reads and 
hears in this time, is worth his meditating for a moment : 
That Society ' exists for the protection of property.' To which 
it. is added, that the poor man also has property, namely, hia 



LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 47 

•labour,' and the fifteen-pence or three -and-sixpence a-day 
he can get for that. True enough, O friends, ' for protecting 
property ; ' most true : and indeed if you will once sufficiently 
enforce that Eighth Commandment, the whole ' rights of man ' 
are well cared for : I know no better definition of the rights 
of man. llioio shalt not luteal, thou shalt not be stolen from : 
what a Society were that ; Plato's Republic, Moore's Utoj^ia 
mere emblems of it ! Give every man what is his, the accu- 
ate price of what he has done and been, no man shall any 
more complain, neither shall the earth sufier any more. For 
the protection of property, in very truth, and for that alone ! 
— And now what is thy property ?. That parchment title-deed, 
that purse thou buttouest in thy breeches-jDocket ? Is that 
thy valuable property ? Unhappy brother, most poor insol- 
vent brother, I without parchment at all, with purse oftenest 
in the flaccid state, imponderous, which will not fling against 
the wind, have quite other property than that ! I have the 
miraculous breath of Life in me, breathed into my nostrils 
by Almighty God. I have affections, thoughts, a god-given 
capability to be and do ; rights, therefore, — the right for in- 
stance to thy love if I love thee, to thy guidance if I obey thee : 
the strangest rights, whereof in church-pulpits one still hears 
something, though almost unintelligible now ; rights, stretch- 
ing high into Immensity, far into Eternity ! Fifteen-pence 
a-daj' ; three-and-sixpence a-day ; eight hundred pounds and 
odd a-day, dost thou call that my property ? 1 value that but 
little ; little all I could purchase with that. For truly, as is 
said, what matters it ? In torn boots, in soft-hung carriages- 
and-four, a man gets always to his journey's end. Socrates 
walked barefoot, or in wooden shoes, and yet arrived happily. 
They never asked him. What shoes or conveyance? never. 
What wages hadst thou? but simply. What work didst thou? 
Property, O brother ? ' Of my very body I have but a life- 
rent.' As for this flaccid purse of mine, 'tis something, noth- 
ing ; has been the slave of pickpockets, cutthroats, Jew-brok- 
ers, gold-dust robbers ; 'twas his, 'tis mine ; — 'tis thine, if 
thou care mucli to steal it. But my soul, breathed into me 
by God, my Me and what capability is there ; that is mine, 



48 CHARTISM. 

and I will resist the stealing of it. I call that mine and not 
thine ; I will keep that, and do what work I can with it : God 
has given it me, the Devil shall not take it away ! — Alas, my 
friends. Society exists and has existed for a great many pur- 
poses, not so easy to specify ! 

Society, it is understood, does not in any age, prevent a 
man from being what he can he. A sooty African can become 
a Toussaint L'ouverture, a murderous Three-fingered Jack, 
let the yellow West Indies say to it what they will. A Scot- 
tish Poet, ' proud of his name and country,' can apply fervently 
to ' Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt,' and become a gauger 
of beer-barrels, and tragical immortal broken-hearted Singer ; 
the stifled echo of his melody audible through long centuries, 
one other note in ' that sacred Miserere ' that rises up to 
Heaven, out of all times and lands. What I can &e thou de- 
cidedly wilt not hinder me from being. Nay even for being 
what I could he, I have the sti-angest claims on thee, — not 
convenient to adjust at present ! Protection of breeches- 
pocket property ? O reader, to what shifts is poor Society 
reduced, struggling to give still some account of herself, in 
epochs when Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of man 
to men ! On the whole, we will advise Society not to talk at 
all about what she exists for ; but rather with her whole in- 
dustry to exist, to tr}^ how she can keep existing ! That is 
her best plan. She may depend upon it, if she ever, by cruel 
chance, did come to exist only for protection of breeches- 
pocket property, she would lose very soon the gift of pro- 
tecting even that, and find her career in our lower world on 
the point of terminating ! — 

For the rest, that in the most perfect Feudal Ages, the 
Ideal of Aristocracy nowhere lived in vacant serene purity as 
an Ideal, but always as a poor imperfect Actual, little heeding 
or not knowing at all that an Ideal lay in it, — this too we will 
cheerfully admit. Imperfection, it is known, cleaves to human 
things ; far is the Ideal departed from; in most times ; very 
far ! And yet so long as an Ideal (any soul of Truth) does, 
in never so confused a manner, exist and work within the 



NOT LAI8SEZ-FAIRE. 49 

Actual, it is a tolerable business. Not so, when the Ideal has 
entirely departed, and the Actual owns to itself that it has 
no Idea, no soul of Truth any longer : at that degree of im- 
perfection human things cannot continue living ; they are 
obliged to alter or expire, when they attain to that. Blotches 
and diseases exist on the skin and deeper, the heart continu- 
ing whole ; but it is another matter when the heart itself be- 
comes diseased ; when there is no heart, but a monstrous 
gangrene pretending to exist there as heart ! 

On the whole, O reader, thou wilt find everywhere that 
things which have had an existence among men have first of 
all had to have a truth and worth in them, and were not sem- 
blances but reahties. Nothing but a reality ever yet got men 
to pay bed and board to it for long. Look at Mahometanism 
itself ! Dalai-Lamaism, even Dalai-Lamaism, one rejoices to 
discover, may be worth its victuals in this world ; not a quack- 
ery but a sincerity ; not a nothing but a something ! The 
mistake of those who believe that fraud, force, injustice, 
whatsoever untrue thing, howsoever cloaked and decorated, 
was ever or can ever be the principle of man's relations to 
man, is great, and the greatest. It is the error of the infidel ; 
in whom the trath as yet is not. It is an error pregnant with 
mere errors and miseries ; an error fatal, lamentable, to be 
abandoned by all men. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

NOT LAISSEZ-FAIEE. 

How an Aristocracy, in these present times and circum- 
stances, could, if never so weU disposed, set about governing 
the Upper Class ? What they should do ; endeavour or attempt ' 
to do ? That is even the question of questions : — the question 
which they have to solve ; which it is our utmost function at 
present to tell them, lies there for solving, and must and will 
be solved. 

Insoluble we cannot fancy it. One select class Society has 
furnished with wealth, intelligence, leisure, means outward 



60 CHARTISM. 

and inward for governing ; another huge class, furnished by 
Society with none of these things, declares that it must be 
governed : Negative stands fronting Positive ; if Negative and 
Positive cannot unite, — it will be worse for both ! Let the 
faculty and earnest constant effort of England combine round 
this matter ; let it once be recognised as a vital matter. Innu- 
merable things our Upper Classes and Lawgivers might ' do ; ' 
but the preliminaiy of all things, we must repeat, is to know 
that a thing must needs be done. We lead them here to the 
shore of a boundless continent ; ask them, Whether they do 
not with their own eyes see it, see strange symptoms of it, 
lying huge, dark, unexplored, inevitable; full of hope, but 
also full of difficulty, savager}^, almost of despair ? Let them 
enter ; they must enter ; Time and Necessity have brought 
them hither ; where they are is no continuing ! Let them 
enter ; the first step once taken, the nest will have become 
clearer, all future steps will become possible. It is a great 
problem for all of us ; but for themselves, we may say, more 
than for any. On them chiefly, as the expected solvers of it, 
will the failure of a solution first fall. One way or other 
there must and will be a solution. 

True, these matters lie far, very far indeed, from the ' usual 
habits of Parliament,' in late times ; from the routine course 
of any Legislative or Administrative body of men that exists 
among us. Too true ! And that is even the thing we com- 
plain of : had the mischief been looked into as it gradually 
rose, it would not have attained this magnitude. That self- 
cancelling Donothingism and Laiasez-faire should have got so 
ingrained into our Practice, is the source of all these miseries. 
It is too true that Parliament, for the matter of near a cen- 
tury now, has been able to undertake the adjustment of al- 
most one thing alone, of itself and its own interests ; leaving 
other interests to rub along very much as they could and 
would. True, this was the practice of the whole Eighteenth 
Centiiry ; and struggles still to prolong itself into the Nine- 
teenth, — which however is no longer the time for it ! Those 
Eighteenth-century Parliaments, one may hope, will become a 
curious object one day. Are not these same ' Memoires ' of 



NOT LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 51 

Horace Walpole, to an unparliamentary eye, already a curious 
object ? One of the clearest-sighted men of the Eighteenth 
Century writes down his Parliamentary observation of it there ; 
a determined despiser and merciless dissector of cant ; a lib- 
eral withal, one who will go all lengths for the ' glorious rev- 
olution ' and resist Tory principles to the death : he writes, 
with an indignant elegiac feeling, how Mr. This, who had 
voted so and then voted so, and was the son of this and the 
bi'other of that, and had such claims to the fat appointment, 
was nevertheless scandalously postponed to Mr. That ; — where- 
upon are not the affairs of this nation in a bad way ? How 
hungry Greek meets liungTy Greek on the floor of St. Ste- 
phens, and wrestles him and throttles him till he has to cry. 
Hold ! the office is thine ! — of this does Horace write. — One 
must say, the destinies of nations do not always rest entirely 
on Parliament. One must say, it is a wonderful affair that 
science of ' government ' as practised in the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury of the Christian era, and still struggling to practise it- 
self. One must say, it was a lucky century that could get it 
so practised : a century which had inherited richly from its 
predecessors ; and also which did, not unnaturally, bequeath 
to its successors a French Revolution, general overturn, and 
reign of terror ; — intimating, in most audible thunder, confla- 
gration, guillotinement, cannonading and universal war and 
earthquake, that such century with its practices had ended. 

Ended ;— for decidedly that course of procedure Avill no 
longer serve. Parliament will absolutely, with whatever effort, 
have to Hft itself out of those deep ruts of donothing routine ; 
and learn to say, on all sides, something more edifying than 
Laissez-faire. If Parliament cannot learn it, what is to become 
of Parliament ? The toiling millions of England ask of their 
English Parliament foremost of all. Canst thou govern us or 
not ? Parliament with its privileges is strong ; but Necessity 
and the Laws of Natui-e are stronger than it. If Parliament 
cannot do this thing, Parliament we prophesy will do some 
other thing and things which, in the strangest and not the 
happiest way, Avill forward its being done, — not much to the 
advantage of Parliament probably ' Done, one way or other, 



52 CHARTISM. 

the thing must be. In these complicated times, with Cash 
Payment as the sole nexus between man and man, the Toiling 
Classes of mankind declare, in their confused but most em- 
phatic way, to the Untoiling, that they will be governed ; that 
they must — under penalty of Chartisms, Thuggeries, Kick- 
burnings, and even blacker things than those. Vain also is it 
to think that the misery of one class, of the great universal 
under class, can be isolated and kept apart and peculiar, down 
in that class. By infallible contagion, evident enough to re- 
flection, evident even to Political Economy that will reflect, 
the misery of the lowest spreads upwards and upwards till it 
reaches the very highest ; till all has grown miserable, palpa- 
bly false and wrong ; and poor drudges hungering ' on meal- 
husks and boiled grass ' do, by circuitous but sure methods, 
bring kings' heads to the block ! 

Cash Payment the sole nexus ; and there are so many 
things which cash will not pay ! Cash is a great miracle ; yet 
it has not all power in Heaven, nor even on Earth. ' Supply 
and demand ' we will honour also ; and yet how many ' de- 
mands ' are there, entirely indispensable, which have to go 
elsewhere than to the shops, and produce quite other than 
cash, before they can get their supply ! On the whole, what 
astonishing payments does cash make in this world ! Of your 
Samuel Johnson furnished with ' fourpence halfpenny a-day,' 
and solid lodging at nights on the paved streets, as his pay- 
ment, we do not speak ; — not in the way of complaint : it is 
a world-old business for the like of him, that same ari'ange- 
ment or a worse ; perhaps the man, for his own uses, had 
need even of that and of no better. Nay is not Society, busy 
with its Talfourd Copja-ight Bill and the like, struggling to 
do something effectual for that man ; — enacting with all indus- 
try that his own creation be accounted his own manufacture, 
and continue unstolen, on his own market-stand, for so long 
as sixty years ? Perhaps Society is right there ; for discrep- 
ancies on that side too may become excessive. All men are 
not patient docile Johnsons ; some of them are half-mad in- 
flammable Kosseaus. Such, in peculiar times, you may drive 
too far. In France, for example. Society was not destitute of 



JVEW BMA8. 53 

cash ; Society contrived to pay Philippe d'Orleans not yet Ega- 
lite three hundred thousand a-year and odd, for driving cabri- 
olets through the streets of Paris and other work done : but in 
cash, encouragement, arrangement, recompense or recognition 
of any kind, it had nothing to give this same half-mad Ros- 
seau for his work done ; whose brain in consequence, too 
' much enforced ' for a weak brain, uttered hasty sparks, Gon- 
trat Social and the like, which proved not so quenchable again ! 
In regard to that species of men too, who knows whether 
Laissez-faire itself (which is Sergeant Talfourd's Copyright 
Bill continued to eternity instead of sixty years) will not turn 
out insufficient, and have to cease, one day ?— 

Alas, in regard to so very many things. Laissez-faire ought 
partly to endeavour to cease ! But in regard to poor Sans- 
jDotatoe peasants, Trades-Union craftsmen. Chartist cotton- 
spinners, the time has come when it must either cease or 
a worse thing straightway begin, — a thing of tinder-boxes, 
vitriol-bottles, second-hand pistols, a visibly insupportable 
thing in the eyes of all. 

CHAPTER V3IL 

NEW ERAS. 

For in very truth it is a ' new Era ; ' a new Practice has be- 
come indispensable in it. One has heard so often of new 
eras, new and newest eras, that the world has grown rather 
empty of late. Yet new eras do come ; there is no fact surer 
than that they have come more than once. And always with 
a change of era, with a change of intrinsic conditions, there 
had to be a change of practice and outward relations brought 
about, — if not peaceably, then by violence ; for brought about 
it had to be, there could no rest come till then. How many 
eras and epochs, not noted at the moment ; — which indeed is 
the blessedest condition of epochs, that they come quietly, 
making no proclamation of themselves, and are only visible 
long after : a Cromwell Rebellion, a French Revolution, 
' striking on the Horologe of Time,' to tell all mortals what 
o'clock it has become, are too expensive, if one could help it ! — 



54 CHARTISM. 

In a strange rhapsodic ' History of the Teuton Kindred 

{Geschichte der Teutschen Sippschaft),' not yet translated into 
our language, we have found a Chapter on the Eras of Eng- 
land, which, Avere there room for it, would be instructive in 
this place. We shall crave leave to excerpt some jDages ; 
partly as a relief from the too near vexations of our own 
rather sorrowful Era ; partly as calculated to throw, more or 
i:>ss obliquely, some degree of light on the meanings of that. 
Tlie Author is anonymous ; but we have heard him called the 
Herr Professor Sauerteig, and indeed think we know him 
under that name : 

' Who shall say what work and works this England has j^et 
' to do ? For what purpose this land of Britain was created, 
' set like a jewel in the encircling blue of Ocean ; and this 
' Tribe of Saxons, fashioned in the depths of Time, " on the 
' shores of the Black Sea" or elsewhere, "out of Harzebirge 
' rock " or Avhatever other material, was sent travelling hither- 
' ward ? No man can say : it was for a work, and for works, 
' incapable of announcement in words. Thou seest them 
' there, these works ; part of them stand done, and visible to 
' the eye ; even these thou canst not navie : how much less 
' the others still matter of prophecy only ! — They live and 
' labour there, these twenty million Saxon men ; they have 
' been born into this mystery of life out of the darkness of 
' Past Time : — how changed now since the first Father and 
' first Mother of them set forth, quitting the Tribe of Theuih, 
'with passionate farewell, under questionable auspices; on 
' scanty bullock-cart, if they had even bullocks and a cart ; 
' with axe and hunting-spear, to subdue a portion of our com- 

• 11 ion Planet ! This Nation now has cities and seedfields, has 

• ispring-vans, dray-waggons. Long-acre carriages, nay railway 
' trains ; has coined money, exchange-bills, laws, books, war- 
' fleets, spinning jennies, warehouses and West-India Docks : 
' see what it has built and done, what it can and will yet build 
' and do ! These umbrageous pleasure-woods, green meadows, 
' shaven stubble-fields, smooth-sweeping roads ; these high- 
' domed cities, and *what they hold and bear ; this mild Good- 



NEW ERA8. 55 

'morrow which the stranger bids thee, equitable, nay for- 
'bearant if need were, judicially calm and law-observing 
'towards thee a stranger, what work has it not cost? How 
' many bi'awny arms, generation after generation, sank down 
'wearied ; how many noble hearts, toiling while life lasted, 
'and Avise heads that wore themselves dim with scanning and 
'.discerning, before this waste WhitecHff, Albion so-called, 
' with its otlier Cassiterides Tin MancU, became a British 
' Empire ! The ritream of World-History has altered its com- 
' plexion ; Komans are dead out, English are come in. The 
' red broad mark of Eomanhood, stamped ineffaceably on that 
' Chart of Time, has disappeared from the present, and be- 
' longs only to the past. England plays its part ; England too 
' has a mark to leave, and we will hope none of the least sig- 
' nificant. Of a truth, whosoever had, wdth the bodily eye, 
'seen Hengst and Horsa mooring on the mud-beach of 
' Thanet, on that spring morning of the Year 449 ; and then, 
'with the spiritual eye, looked forward to New York, Cal- 
' cutta, Sidney Cove, across the ages and the oceans ; and 
' thouglit what Wellingtons, Washingtons, Shakspears, Mil- 
' tons, Watts, Arkwrights, William Pitts and Davie Crocketts 
' had to issue from that business, and do their several task- 
' words so,— Ae would have said, those leather-boats of Hengst's 
' had a kind of cargo in them ! A genealogic Mythus superior 
' to any in the old Greek, to almost any in the old Hebrew 
' itself ; and not a Mythus either, but every fibre of it fact. 
' An Epic Poem was there, and all manner of poems ; except 
' that the Poet has not yet made his appearance.' 

' Six centuries of obscure endeavour,' continues Sauerteig, 
' which to read Historians, 3'ou would incline to call mere ob- 
' scure slaughter, discord, and misendeavour ; of which all 
' that the human memory, after a thousand readings, can I'e- 
' member, is that it resembled, what Milton names it, the 
' "flocking and fighting of kites and crows;" this, in brief, 
' is the history of the Heptarchy or Seven Kingdoms. Six 
' centuries ; a stormy springtime, if thei'e ever was one, for a 
' Nation. Obscure fighting of kites and crows, however, was 
* not the History of it ; but was only what the dim Historians 



56 CHARTISM. 

of it saw good to record. Were not forests felled, bogs 
drained, fields made arable, towns built, laws made, and the 
Thought and Practice of men in many ways perfected ? Ven- 
erable Bede had got a language which he could now not only 
speak, but sjdcU and put on paper : think what lies in that. 
Bemurmured by the German sea-flood swinging slow with 
sullen roar against those hoarse Northumbrian rocks, the 
venerable man set down several things in a legible man- 
ner. Or w^as the smith idle, hammering only war-tools? He 
had learned metallurgy, stithy -work in general ; and made 
plough-shares withal, and adzes and mason-hammers. Cas- 
tra, Caesters or Chesters, Dons, Tons {Zauns, In closures or 
Towns), not a few, did they not stand there ; of burnt brick, 
of timbei', of lath-and-clay ; sending up the peaceable smoke 
of hearths ? England had a History then too ; though no 
Historian to write it. Those " flockings and fightings," sad 
inevitable necessities, were the expensive tentative steps 
towards some capability of living and working in concert : 
experiments they were, not always conclusive, to ascertain 
who had the might over whom, the right over whom. 

' M. Thierry has written an ingenious Book, celebrating 
with considei'able pathos the fate of the Saxons, fallen under 
that fierce-heai'ted Conquestor, Acquirer or Conqueror, as he 
is named. M. Thierry professes to have a turn for looking 
at that side of things : the fate of the Welsh too moves him ; 
of the Celts generally, whom a fiercer race swept before them 
into the mountainous nooks of the West, whither they were 
not worth following. Noble deeds, according to M. Thierry, 
were done by these unsuccessful men, heroic sufferings 
undergone ; which it is a pious duty to rescue from forget- 
feilness. True, surely ! A tear at least is due to the un- 
happy : it is right and fit that there should be a man to 
assert that lost cause too, and see what can still be made of 
it. Most right : — and yet on the whole, taking matters on 
that great scale, what can we say but that the cause Avhich 
pleased the gods has in the end pleased Cato also ? Cato 
cannot alter it ; Cato will find that he cannot at bottom wish 
to alter it. Might and Right do differ fiightfully from hour 



NEW ERAS. 57 

' to hour ; but give them centuries to try it in, they are found 
' to be identical. Whose land luas this of Britain ? God's 
' who made it, His and no other's it was and is. Who of 
' God's creatixres had right to live in it ? The wolves and 
' bisons ? Yes they ; till one with a better right showed him- 
' self. The Celt, "aboriginal savage of Europe," as a snarl- 
' ing antiquary names him, arrived, pretending to have a 
' better right ; and did accordingly, not without pain to the 
' bisons, make good the same. He had a better right to that 
' piece of God's land ; namely a better might to turn it to 
' use ; — a might to settle himself there, at least, and try what 
' use he could turn it to. The bisons disappeared ; the Celts 
' took possession, and tilled. Forever, was it to be ? Alas, 
' Fore €67- is not a category that can establish itself in. this 
' world of Time. A world of Time, by the very definition of 
' it, is a world of mortality and mutability, of Beginning and 
' Ending. No property is eternal but God the Maker's : 
' whom Heaven pei'mits to take possession, his is the right : 
' heaven's sanction IS spch permission, — while it lasts : nothing 
' more can be said. tVhy does that hyssop grow there, in the 
' chink of the wall ? Because the whole universe, sufficiently 
' occupied otherwise, could not hitherto prevent its gTowing ! 
' It has the might and the right. By the same great law do 
' Eoman Empires estabhsh themselves. Christian Eeligions 
' promulgate themselves, and all extant Powers bear rule. 
' The strong thing is the just thing : this thou wilt find 
' throughout in our world ; — as indeed was God and Truth 
' the Maker of our world, or was Satan and Falsehood ? 

' One proposition widely current as to this Norman Con- 
' quest is of a Physiologic sort: That the conquerors and con- 
' qaered here were of different races ; nay that the Nobility 
' of England is still, to this hour, of a somewhat different 
' blood from the commonalty, their fine Norman features con- 
' trasting so jDleasantl}^ with the coarse Saxon ones of the 
' others. God knows, there are coarse enough features to be 
' seen among the commonalty of that country ; but if the No- 
' bility's be finer, it is not their Normanhood that can be the 
' reason. Does the above Physiologist reflect who those same 



58 OH ART ISM. 

* Normans, Northmen, originally were ? Baltic Saxons, and 
' what other miscellany of Lurdanes, Jutes and Deutsch Pi- 
' rates from the East-sea marshes would join them in plunder 
' of France ! If living three centuries longer in Heathenism, 
' sea-robbery, and the unlucrative fishing of ambergris could 
' ennoble them beyond the others, then were they ennobled. 
' The Normans were Saxons who had learned to speak French. 
' No : by Thor and Wodan, the Saxons were all as noble as 
' was needful ; — shaped, says the My thus, " from the rock of 
' the Harzgebirge ; " brother-tribes being made of clay, wood, 
' water, or what other material might be going ! A stubborn, 
' taciturn, sulky, indomitable rock-made race of men ; as the 
' figure they cut in all quarters, in the cane-brake of Arkansas, 
' in the Ghauts of the Himmalayha, no less than in London 
' City, in Warwick or Lancaster County, does still abun- 
' dantly manifest.' 



' To this English People in World-History, there have 
'been, shall I prophesy. Two grand tasks assigned? Huge- 
' looming through the dim tumult of the always incommen- 
' surable Present Time, outlines of two tasks disclose them- 
' selves : the grand Industrial task of conquering some half 
' or more of this Terraqueous Planet for the use of man ; then 
' secondly, the grand Constitutional task of sharing, in some 
'pacific endurable manner, the fruit of said conquest, and 
' showing all people how it might be done. These I will call 
' their two tasks, discernible hitherto in World-History : in 
' both of these they have made respectable though unequal 
' progress. Steamengines, ploughshares, pickaxes ; what is 
' meant by conquering this Planet, they partly know. Elec- 
'tive franchise, ballot-box, representative assembly; how io 
' accomplish sharing of that conquest, they do not so Vvell 
' know. Europe knows not ; Europe vehemently asks in these 
' days, but receives no answer, no credible answer. For as to 
' the partial Delolmish, Benthamee, or other French or Eug- 
'lish answers, current in the proper quarters and highly 



NEW ERAS. 50 

' beneficial and indispensable there, thy disbelief in them as 
' final answers, I take it, is complete.' 



' Succession of rebellions ? Successive clippings away of 
' the Supreme Authority ; class after class rising in revolt to 

* s.iy, "We will no moi'e be governed so"? That is not tlio 
' history of the English Constitution ; not altogether that. 
' Eebellion is the means, but it is not the motive cause. The 
' motive cause, and true secret of the matter, were always 
' this : The necessity there was for rebelling ? 

' Rights I will permit thee to call everywhere correctly-artl- 
' dilated mights. A dreadful business to articulate correctly ! 
' Consider those Barons of Eunuymead ; consider all manner 
' of successfully revolting men ! Your Great Charter has to 

* be experimented on, by battle and debate, for a hundred- 
' and-fifty years ; is then found to he correct ; and stands as 
' true Magna Charta, — nigh cut in pieces by a tailor, short of 
' measures, in later generations. Mights, I say, are a dread- 
' f ul business to articulate correctly ! Yet articulated they 

* have to be ; the time comes for it, the need comes for it, and 
' with enormous difficulty and experimenting it is got done. 
' Call it not succession of rebellions ; call it rather succession 
' of expansions, of enlightenments, gift of articulate utterance 
' descending ever lower. Class after class acquires faculty of 
' utterance, — Necessity teaching and compelling ; as the dumb 
' youth seeing the knife at his father's throat, suddenly ac- 
' quired speech ! Consider too how class after class not only 
' acquires faculty of articulating wliat its might is, but like- 
' wise grows in might, acquires might or loses might ; so that 

' always, after a space, there is not only new gift of articulat- . 
' ing, but there is something new to articulate. Constitu- 
' tional epochs will never cease among men.' 



' And so now, the Barons all settled and satisfied, a new 
• class hitherto silent had begun to speak ; the Middle Class, 



60 vnABTIBM. 

' namely. In the time of James First, not only Knights of the 
' Shire but Parliamentary Burgesses assemble, to assert, to 
' complain and propose ; a real House of Commons has come 
' decisively into play, — much to the astonishment of James 
' First. We call it a growth of mights, if also of necessities ; 
' a growth of power to articulate mights, and make rights of 
' them. 

' In those jDast silent centuries, among those silent classes, 
' much had been going on. Not only had red-deer in the New 
' and other Forests been got preserved and shot ; and treach- 
' eries of Simon de Montfoi't, wars of Bed and White Eoses, 
' Battles of Crecy, Battles of Bosworth and many other battles 
' been got transacted and adjusted ; but England wholly, not 
• without sore toil and aching bones to the millions of sires 
' and the millions of sons these eighteen generations, had been 
' got drained and tilled, covered with yellow harvests, beauti- 
' ful and rich possessions ; the mud wooden Caesters and 
' Chesters had become steepled tile-roofed compact Towns. 
' Sheffield had taken to the manufacture of Sheffield whittles ; 
' Worstead could from wool spin yarn, and knit or weave the 
' same into stockings or breeches for men. England had 
' property valuable to the auctioneer ; but the accumulated 
' manufacturing, commercial, economic i'JciU which lay impal- 
' pably warehoused in English hands and heads, what auction- 
.' eer could estimate ! 

' Hardly an Englishman to be met with but could do some- 
' thing ; some cunninger thing than break his fellow-creature's 
' head with battle-axes. The seven incorporated trades, with 
' their million guild-brethren, with their hammers, their shut- 
' ties and tools, what an army ; — fit to conquer that land of 
' England, as we say, and to hold it conquered ! Nay, strangest 
' of all, the English people had acquired the faculty and habit 
' of thinking, — even of believing ; individual conscience had 
' unfolded itself among them ; Conscience, and Intelligence its 
' handmaid. Ideas of innumerable kinds were circulating 
' among these men : witness one Shakspeare, a woolcomber, 
' poacher, or whatever else at Stratford in Warwickshire, who 
' happened to write books ! The finest human figure, as I ap- 



NEW ERAS. 61 

prehend, that Nature has hitherto seen fit to make of our 
widely diffused Teutonic clay. Saxon, Norman, Celt or Sar- 
mat, I find no human soul so beautiful, these fifteen hundred 
known years ; — our supreme modern European man. Him 
Eugland had contrived to realize ; were there not ideas? 

' Ideas poetic and also Puritanic, — that had to seek utter- 
ance in the notablest way ! England had got her Shakspeare ; 
but was now about to get her Milton and Oliver Cromwell. 
This too we will call a new expansion, hard as it might be to 
articulate and adjust ; this, that a man could actually have 
a Conscience for his own behoof, and not for his Priest's 
only ; that his Priest, be who he might, would henceforth 
have to take that fact along with him. One of the hardest 
things to adjust ! It is not adjusted down to this hour. It 
lasts onwards to the time they call " Glorious Revolution " 
before so much as a reasonable truce can be made, and the 
war proceed by logic mainly. And still it is war, and no 
peace, unfess we call waste vacancy peace. But it needed 
to be adjusted, as the others had done, as still others will 
do. Nobility at Runnymead cannot endure foul play grown 
palpable ; no more can Gentry in Long Parliament ; no more 
can Commonalty in Parliament they name Reformed. 
Prynne's bloody ears were as a testimony and question to all 
England : "Englishmen, is this fair?" England, no longer 
continent of herself, answered, bellowing as with the voice 
of lions : " No, it is not fair ! " ' 



' But now on the Industrial side, while this great Constitu- 
' tional controversy, and revolt of the Middle Class had not 
' ended, had yet but begun, what a shoot was that that Eng- 
' land, carelessly, in quest of other objects, struck out across 
' the Ocean, into the waste land which it named Neio England ! 
' Hail to thee, poor little ship Mayflower, of Delft-Haven ; 
' poor common-looking ship, hired by common charter party 
' for coined dollars ; caulked with mere oakum and tar ; — pro- 
' visioned with vulgarest biscuit and bacon ; — yet what ship 



62 CHARTISM. 

* Argo, or miraculous epic ship built by the Sea-gods, was 
' other than a foolish bumbarge in comparison ! Golden 
' fleeces or the like these sailed for, with or without effect ; 
' thou little Mayflower hadst in thee a veritable Pi-omethean 
'■ spark ; the life-spark of the largest Nation on our Earth, — so 
' we may already name the Transatlantic Saxon Nation. Tiiey 
' went seeking leave to hear sermon in their own method, theso 
' Mayflower Puritans ; a most honest indispensable search : 
' and yet, like Saul the son of Kish, seeking a small thing, they 
'found this unexpected great thing! Honour to the bravo 
' and true ; they verily, we say, carry fire from Heaven, and 

* have a power which themselves dream not of. Let all men 

* honour Puritanism, since God has so honoured it. Islam 
' itself, with its wild heartfelt '' Allah akhar, God is great," was 
' it not honoui'ed ? There is but one thing Avithout honour ; 
' smitten with eternal barrenness and inability to do or be : 
' Insincerity, Unbelief. He who believes no thing, who be- 
' lieves only the shows of things, is not in relation with Nature 
' and Fact at all. Nature denies him ; orders him at his earli- 
' est convenience to disappear. Let him disappear from her 
' domains, — into those of Chaos, Hypothesis and Simulacrum, 
' or wherever else his parish may be.' 



' As to the third Constitutional controversy, tha.t of the 

* Working Classes, which now debates itself everywhere these 
' fifty years, in France specifically since 1789, in England too 
' since 1831, it is doubtless the hardest of all to get articu- 
' lated ; finis of peace, or even reasonable truce on this, is a 

* thing I have little prospect of for several generations. Dark, 
' wild-weltering, dreary, boundless ; nothing heard on it jet 
' but ballot-boxes, Parliamentary arguing ; not to speak of 
' much far worse arguing, by steel and lead, from Valmy to 
' Waterloo, to Peterloo ! ' 

' And yet of Kepresentative Assemblies may not this good 
' be said : That contending parties in a country do thereby 
' ascertain one another's strength? They fight there, since 



NEW EBA8. 63 

' fight they must, by petition, Parliamentary eloquence, not 
' by sword, bayonet and bursts of military cannon. Why do 
' men fight at all, if it be not that they are yet wuacquaiuted 
' with one another's strength, and must fight and ascertain 
' it ? Knowing that thou art stronger than I, that thou canst 
' compel me, I will submit to thee : unless I chance to pre- 
' fer extermination, and sHghtly circuitous suicide, there is no 
' other course for me. That in England, by public meetings, 
' by petitions, by elections, leading-articles, and other jang- 
' ling hubbub and tongue-fence which perpetually goes on 
' everywhere in that country, people ascertain one another's 
* strength, and the most obdurate House " of Lords has to 
' yield and give in before it come to cannonading and guil- 
' lotinement ; this is a saving characteristic of England. Nay, 
' at bottom, is not this the celebrated English Constitution 
'itself? This ttnspoken Constitution, whereof Privilege of 
' ParHament, Money-Bill, Mutiny-Bill, and all that could be 
' spoken and enacted hitherto, is not the essence and body, 
' but only the shape and skin ? Such Constitution is, in our 
' times, verily invaluable.' 



' Long storm}'- spring-time, wet contentious April, winter 
' chilUng the lap of very May ; but at length the season of 
' summer does come. So long the tree stood naked ; angry 
' wiry naked boughs moaning and creaking in the wind : you 
' would say. Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground ? 
' Not so ; we must wait ; all things will have their time. — Of 
' the man Shakspeare, and his Elizabethan Era, with its 
' Sydneys, Ealeighs, Bacons, what could we say ? — That it was 
' a spiritual flower-time. Suddenly, as with the breath of 
' June, your rude naked tree is touched ; bursts into leaves 
' and flowers, f^uch leaves and flowers. The past long ages of 
' nakedness, and wintry fermentation and elaboration, have 
' done their part, though seeming to do nothing. The past 
' silence has got a voice, all the more significant the longer it 
' had continued silent. In trees, men, institutions, creeds. 



64 CHARTISM. 

' Kations, in all things extant and growing m tins universe, 
' we may note such vicissitudes, and budding-times. More- 
' over there are spiritual budding-times ; and then also there 
' are physical appointed to nations. 

' Thus in the middle of that poor calumniated Eighteenth 
' Century, see once more ! Long winter again past, the dead- 
' seeming tree proves to be living, to have been always living, 
' after motionless times, every bough shoots forth on the sud- 
' den, very strangely : — it now turns out that this favoured 
' England was not only to have had her Shakspeares, Bacons, 
' Sydneys, but to have her Watts, Arkwrights, Brindleys ! We 
' will honour greatness in all kinds. The Prospero evoked 
' the singing of Ariel, and took captive the world with those 
'melodies: the same Prospero can send his Fire-demons 
' panting across all oceans ; shooting with the speed of me- 
' teors, on cunning highways, from end to end of kingdoms ; 
' and make Iron his missionary, preaching Us evangel to the 
' brute Primeval Powers, which listen and obe}^ : neither is 
' this small. Manchester, with its cotton-fuz, its smoke and 
' dust, its tumult and contentious squalor, is hideous to thee ? 
' Think not so : a precious substance, beautiful as magic 
' dreams, and yet no dream but a reality, lies hidden in that 
' noisome wi'appage ; — a wrappage struggling indeed (look at 
' Chartisms and such like) to cast itself off, and leave the 

* beauty free and visible there ! Hast thou heard, with sound 
' ears, the awakening of a Manchester, on Monday morning, at 
' half past five by the clock ; the rushing off of its thousand 
' mills, like the broom of an Atlantic tide, ten thousand times 
' ten thousand spools and spindles all set humming there, — it 
' is perhaps, if thou knew it well, sublime as a Niagara, or 
' more so. Cotton-spinning is the clothing of the naked in 
'its result; the triumph of man over matter in its means. 
' Soot and despair are not the essence of it ; they are divisible 
'from it, — at this hour, are they not crying fiercely to be 
' divided ? The great Goethe, looking at cotton Switzerland, 
' declared it, I am told, to be of all things that he had seen in 
' this world the most poetical. Whereat friend Kanzler von 

* Miiller, in search of the palpable picturesque, could not but 



J^UW ERAS. 65 

'stare wide-eyed. Nevertheless our World-Poet knew well 
' what he was saying.' 

'Eichard Arkwright, it would seem, was not a beautiful 
' man ; no romance-hero with haughty eyes, Apollo-lip, and 
' gestiu-e like the herald Mercury ; a plain almost gross, bag- 
' cheeked, potbellied Lancashire man, with an air of painful 
'reflection, yet also of copious free digestion; — a man sta- 
' tioned by the community to shave certain dusty beards, in the 
' Northern parts of England, at a half-penny each. To such 
' end, we say, by forethought, oversight, accident and arrange- 
'ment, had Eichard Arkwright been, by the community of 
' England and his own consent, set apart. Nevertheless, in 
' strapping of razors, in lathering of dusty beards, and the 
' contradictions and confusions attendant thereon, the man 

* had notions in that rough head of his ; spindles, shuttles, 
' wheels and contrivances plying ideally within the same ; 
' rather hopeless-looking ; which, however, he did at last bring 

* to bear. Not without difficulty. His townsfolk rose in mob 
' round him, for threatening to shorten labour, to shorten 
' wages ; so that he had to fly, with broken washpots, scat- 
' tered household, and seek refuge elsewhere. Nay his wife 

* too, as I learn, rebelled ; burnt his wooden model of his 
' spinning wheel ; resolute that he should stick to his razors 
' rather : for which, however, he decisively, as thou wilt rejoice 
' to understand, packed her out of doors. O reader, what a 
' Historical Phenomenon is that bag-cheeked, potbellied, much 
' enduring, much-inventing man and barber ? French Eevo- 
' lutions were a-brewing : to resist the same in any measure, 
' imperial Kaisers were impotent without the cotton and cloth 
' of England : and it was this man that had to give England 
' the power of cotton.' 

' Neither had Watt of the Steamengine a heroic origin, any 
' kindred with the princes of this world. The princes of this 
' world were shooting their partridges ; noisily, in Parliament 
' or elsewhere, solving the question, Head or tail ? while this 
' man, with blackened fingers, with grim brow, was searching 
' out, in his workshop, the Fire-secret ; or, having found it, 
' was painfully wending to and fro in quest of a " monied 
5 



66 CHARTISM. 

' man " as indispensable man-midwife of tlie same. Eeader, 
' thou slialt admire what is admirable, not what is dressed in 
' admirable. . Thou shalt learn to know the British lion even 
' when he is not throne-supporter, and also the British jack- 
' ass in lion's skin even when he is. Ah, couldst thou always, 
' what a world were it ! But has the Berlin Royal Academy 
' or any Engiish Usefiol-Knowledge Society discovered, for in- 
' stance, who it was that first scratched earth with a stick ; and 
' threw corns, the biggest he could find, into it ; seedgrains of 
' a certain grass, which he named lohite or loheat ? Again, what 
' is the whole Tees- water and other breeding world to him who 
' stole home from the forests the first bison-calf, and bred it 
' up to be a tame bison, a milk-cow ? No machine of all they 
' showed me in Birmingham can be put in comparison for in- 
' genuity with that figure of the wedge named knife, of the 
■wedges named ^axo, of the lever named hammer: — nay is it 
' not with the hammer-knife, named sivord, that m.en fight, and 
' maintain any semblance of constituted authority that yet 
' survives among us ? The steamengine I call fire-demon and 
' great ; but it is nothing to the invention of Jire. Prome- 
' theus, Tubal-cain, Triptolemus ! Are not our greatest men 
' as good as lost ? The men that walk daily among us, cloth- 
' ing us, warming us, feeding us, walk shrouded in darkness, 
' mere mythic men. 

' It is said, ideas produce revolutions : and truly so they do ; 
' not spiritual ideas only, but even mechanical. In this clang- 
'ing clashing universal Sword-dance which the European 
' world now dances for the last half-century, Voltaire is but 
' one choragus, where Eichard Arkwright is another. Let it 
'dance itself out. When Arkwright shall have become 
' mythic like Arachne, we shall spin in peaceable profit by 
' him ; and the Sword-dance, with all its sorrowful shufflings, 
'Waterloo waltzes, Moscow gallopades, how forgotten will 
'that be !' 



' On the whole, were not all these things most unexpected, 
' unforeseen ? As indeed what thing is foreseen ; especially 
'what man, the parent of things ! Eobert Olive in that same 



NEW ERAS. 67 

'time went out, with a developed gift of penmanship, as 
' writer or superior book-keeper to a Trading Factory estab- 
' hshed in the distant East. With gift of penmanship devel- 
' oped ; with other gifts not yet developed, which the calls of 
' the case did by and by develoj)e. Not fit for book-keeping 
'alone, the man was found fit for conquering Nawaubs, found- 
' ing kingdoms, Indian Empires ! In a questionable manner, 
' Indian Empire from the other hemisphere took up its abode 
' in Leadenhall Street, in the City of London. 

' Accidental all these things and persons look, unexpected 
'every one of them to man. Yet inevitable every one of 
' them ; foreseen, not unexpected, by Suj)reme Power ; pre- 
' pared, appointed from afar. Advancing always through all 
'centuries, in the middle of the eighteenth they arrived. 
' The Saxon kindred burst forth into cotton-spinning, cloth- 
' cropping, iron-forging, steam-engining, railwaying, commerc- 
' ing and careering towards all the winds of Heaven, — in this 
' inexplicable noisy manner ; the noise of which, in Power- 
' mills, in progress-of-the-species Magazines, still deafens us 
' somewhat. Most noisy, sudden ! The Staffordshire coal- 
' stratum and coal-strata, lay side by side with iron-strata, 
' quiet since the creation of the world ! Water flowed in 
' Lancashire and Lanarkshire ; bituminous fire lay bedded in 
' rocks there too, — over which how many fighting Stanleys, 
' black Douglases, and other the like contentious persons, had 
' fought out their bickerings and broils, not without result, 
'we will hope ! But God said. Let the iron missionaries be ; 
'and they were. Coal and iron, so long close unregardful 
' neighbours, are wedded together ; Birmingham and Wol- 
' verhampton, and the hundred Stygian forges, with their fire- 
' throats and never-resting sledge-hammers, rose into day. 
' Wet Mancunium stretched out her hand towards Carolina 
' and the torrid zone, and plucked cotton there : who could 
' forbid her, her that had the skill to weave it ? Fish fled 
' therevTpon from the Mersey River, vexed with innumerable 
' keels. England, I say, dug out her bitumen-tire, and bade 
' it work : towns rose, and steeple-chimneys ; — Chartisms 
'also, and Parliaments they name Reformed.' 



68 CHARTISM. 

Sucli, figuratively given, are some prominent points, cliief 
mountain-summits, of our English, history past and present, 
according to the Author of this strange untranslated Work, 
whom we think we recognise to be an old acquaintance. 



CHAPTER IX. 

PAELIAMENTAEY EADICALISM. 



To US looking at these matters somewhat in the same light, 
Reform-Bills, French Revolutions, Louis-Philippes, Chartisms, 
Revolts of Three Days, and what not, are no longer inexpli- 
cable. Where the great mass of men is tolei'ably right, all is 
right ; where they are not right, all is wrong. The speaking 
classes speak and debate, each for itself ; the great dumb, 
deep-buried class lies like an Enceladus, who in his pain, if he 
wiU complain of it, has to produce earthquakes ! Everywhere, 
in these countries, in these times, the central fact worthy of all 
consideration forces itself on us in this shape : the claim of 
the Free Working man to be raised to a level, we may say, 
with the Working Slave, his anger and cureless discontent 
till that be done. Food, shelter, due guidance, in return for 
his labour : candidly interpreted, Chartism and all such isms 
mean that ; and the madder they are, do they not the more 
emphatically mean, "See what guidance you have given us ! 
What delirium we are brought to talk and project, guided by 
nobody ! " Laissez-faire on the part of the Governing Classes, 
we repeat again and again, will, with whatever difficulty, have 
to cease ; pacific mutual division of the spoil, and a world 
well let alone, will no longer suffice. A Do-nothing G-uid- 
ance ; and it is a Do-something World ! Would to God our 
Dacal Duces would become leaders indeed ; our Aristocracies 
and Priesthoods discover in some suitable degree what the 
world expected of them, what the world could no longer do 
without getting of them ! Nameless unmeasured confusions, 
misery to themselves and us, might so be spared. But that 
too will be as God has appointed. If they learn, it will be 
well and happy : if not they, then others instead of them will 



PARLIAMENTARY RADICALISM. 09 

and must, and once more, though after a long sad circuit, it 
will be Avell and happy. 

Neither is the history of Chartism mysterious in these 
times ; especially if that of Radicalism be looked at. All 
along for the last five-and-twenty years, it was curious to 
note how the internal discontent of England struggled to find 
vent for itself through any orifice : the poor patient all sick 
from centre to surface, comj)lains now of this member, now of 
that ; — corn-laws, currency -laws, free-trade, protection, want 
of free-trade : the poor patient tossing from side to side, 
seeking a sound side to lie on, finds none. This Doctor says, 
it is the liver ; that other, it is the lungs, the head, the heart, 
defective transpiration in the skin. A thorough-going Doctor 
of eminence said, it was rotten boroughs ; the Avant of ex- 
tended suffrage to destroy rotten boroughs. From of old 
the English patient himself had a continually recurring 
notion that this was it. The English people are used to suf- 
frage ; it is their panacea for all that goes wrong with them ; 
they have a fixed- idea of suffrage. Singular enough ; one's 
right to vote for a Member of Parliament, to send one's 
' twenty thousandth part of a master of tongue-fence to 
National Palaver,' — the Doctors asserted that this was Free- 
dom, this and no other. It seemed credible to many men, 
of high degree and of low. The persuasion of remedy grew, 
the evil was pressing ; Swing's ricks were on fire. Some nine 
years ago, a State-surgeon rose, and in peculiar circumstances 
said : Let there be extension of the suffrage ; let the great 
Doctor's nostrum, the patient's old passionate prayer be 
fulfiUed ! 

Parliamentary Radicalism, while it gave articulate utterance 
to the discontent of the English people, could not by its 
worst enemy be said to be without a function. If it is in the 
natural order of things that there must be discontent, no less 
so is it that such discontent should have an outlet, a Parlia- 
mentary voice. Here the matter is debated of, demonstrated, 
contradicted, qualified, reduced to feasibility ; — can at least 
solace itself with hope, and die gently, convicted of 2<ftfeasi- 
bility. The New, Untried ascertains how it will fit itself into 



70 CHARTISM 

the arrangements of the Old ; whether the Old can be com- 
pelled to admit it ; how in that case it may, with the minimum 
of violence, be admitted. Nor let us count it an easy one, 
this function of Radicalism ; it was one of the most difficult. 
The pain-stricken patient does, indeed, without effort groan 
and complain ; but not without effort does the physician as- 
certain what it is that has gone wrong with him, how some 
remedy may be devised for him. And above all, if your pa- 
tient is not one sick man, but a whole sick nation ! Dingy 
dumb millions, gximed with dust and sweat, with darkness, 
rage and sorrow, stood round these men, saying, or struggling 
as they could to say : " Behold, our lot is unfair ; our life is 
not whole but sick : we cannot live under injustice ; go ye and 
get us justice ! " For whether the poor operative clamoured 
for Time-bill, Factory-bill, Corn-bill, for or against whatever 
bill, this was what he meant. All bills plausibly presented 
might have some look of hope in them, might get some 
clamour of approval from him ; as, for the man wholly sick, 
there is no disease in the Nosology but he can trace in him- 
self some symptoms of it. Such was the mission of Parha- 
mentary Radicalism. 

How ParHamentary Radicalism has fulfilled this mission, 
entrusted to its management these eight years now, is known 
to all men. The expectant millions have sat at a feast of the 
Barmecide ; been bidden fill themselves with imagination of 
meat. What thing has Radicalism obtained for them ; what 
other than shadows of things has it so much as asked for 
them ? Cheap Justice, Justice to Ireland, Irish Appropriation- 
Clause, Rate-paying Clause, Poor-Rate, Church-Rate, House- 
hold Suffrage, Ballot-Question ' open ' or shut : not things but 
shadows of things ; Benthamee formulas ; barren as the east- 
wind ! An Ultra-radical, not seemingly of the Benthamee 
species, is forced to exclaim : ' The peoj)le are at last wearied. 
' They say. Why should we be ruined in our shops, thrown 

* out of our farms, voting for these men ? Ministerial major- 
' ities decHne ; this Ministry has become impotent, had it 
' even the will to do good. They have called long to us, 

* "We are a Reform Ministry ; will ye not support us? " We 



PARLIAMENT ABY BADIGALISM. 71 

' have supported tliem ; borne them forward indignantly on 
' our shoulders, time after time, fall after fall, when they had 

* beeji hurled out into the street ; and lay prostrate, helpless, 
' Uke dead luggage. It is the fact of a Eeform Ministiy, not 
' the name of one that we would support ! Languor, sickness 
' of hope deferred pervades the public mind ; the public 
' mind says at last, Why all this struggle for the name of a 

* Keform Ministry ? Let the Tories be Ministry if they will ; 
' let at least some living reality be Ministry ! A rearing horse 
' that will only run backward, he is not the horse one would 
' choose to travel on : yet of all conceivable horses the worst 
' is the dead horse. Mounted on a rearing horse, you may 

* back him, spur him, check him, make a little way even back- 
' wards ; but seated astride of your dead horse, what chance 
' is there for you in the chapter of possibilities ? You sit 
' motionless, hopeless, a spectacle to gods and men.' 

There is a class of revolutionists named Girondins, whose 
fate in history is remarkable enough ! Men who rebel, and 
urge the Lower Classes to rebel, ought to have other than 
Formulas to go upon. Men who discern in the misery of the 
toiling complaining millions not misery, but only a raw-mate- 
rial which can be wrought upon, and traded in, for one's own 
poor hidebound theories and egoisms ; to whom millions of 
living fellow-creatm-es, with beating hearts in their bosoms, 
beating, suffering, hoping, are 'masses,' mere 'explosive 
masses for blowing down Bastilles with,' for voting at hust- 
ings for ws ; such men are of the questionable species ! No 
man is justified in resisting by word or deed the Authority he 
lives under, for a light cause, be such Authority what it may. 
Obedience, httle as many may consider that side of the mat- 
ter, is the primary duty of man. No man but is bound in- 
defeasibly, with all force of obligation, to obey. Parents, 
teachers, superiors, leaders, these all creatures recognise as 
deserving obedience. Recognised or not recognised, a man 
has his superiors, a regular hierarchy above him ; extending 
up, degree above _ degree ; to Heaven itself and God the 
Maker, who made His world not for anarchy but for rule and 
order ! It is not a light matter when the just man can recog- 



72 CHARTISM. 

nise in the poAvers set over bim no longer anything that is di- 
vine ; when resistance against such becomes a deeper law of 
order than obedience to them ; when the jnst man sees himself 
in the tragical position of a stirrer up of strife ! Rebel with- 
out due and most due cause, is the ugliest of words ; the first 
rebel was Satan. 

But now in these circumstances shall we blame the unvot- 
ing disappointed millions that they turn awaj^ with horror 
from this name of a Reform Ministry, name of a Parliamentary 
Radicalism, and demand a fact and reality thereof? That 
they too, having still faith in what so many had faith in, still 
count ' extension of the suffrage ' the one thing needful ; and 
say, in such manner as they can. Let the suffrage be still ex- 
tended, then all will be well ? It is the ancient British faith ; 
promulgated in these ages by prophets and evangelists ; 
preached forth from barrel-heads by all manner of men. He 
who is free and blessed has his twenty-thousandth part of a 
master of tongue-fence in National Palaver ; whosoever is not 
blessed but unhappy, the ailment of him is that he has it not. 
Ought he not to have it then ? By the law of God and of 
men, Yea ; — and will have it withal ! Chartism, with its ' five 
points,' born aloft on pikeheads and torchlight meetings, is 
there. Chartism is one of the most natural phenomena in 
England. Not that Chartism now exists should provoke won- 
der ; but that the invited hungry people should have sat eight 
years at such table of the Barmecide, patiently expecting 
somewhat from the Name of a Reform Ministry, and not till 
after eight years have grown hopeless, this is the respectable 
side of the miracle. 



CHAPTER X. 

IMPOSSIBLE. 

" But what are we to do ? " exclaims the practical man, im- 
patiently on every side : " Descend from speculation and the 
safe pulpit, down into the rough market-place, and say what 
can be done ! " — O practical man, there seem very many things 



IMPOSSIBLE. 73 

•which practice and true manlike effort, in ParKament and out 
of it, might actually avail to do. But the first of all things, 
as already said, is to gird thyself up for actual doing ; to know 
that thou actually either must do, or, as the Irish say, ' come 
out of that.' 

It is not a lucky word this same impossible : no good comes 
of those that have it so often in their mouth. Who is he 
that says alw^s. There is a lion in the way ? Sluggard, thou 
must slay the lion, then ; the way has to be travelled ! In 
Art, in Practice, innumerable critics will demonstrate that 
most things are henceforth impossible ; that we are got, once 
for all, into the region of perennial commonplace, and must 
contentedly continue there. Let such critics demonstrate ; 
it is the nature of them : what harm is in it ? Poetry once 
well demonstrated to be impossible, arises the Burns, arises 
the Goethe. Unheroic commonplace being now clearly all 
we have to look for, comes the Napoleon, comes the conquest 
of the world. It was proved by fluxionary calculus, that 
steamships could never get across from the farthest point of 
Ireland to the nearest of Newfoundland : impelling force, re- 
sisting force, maximum here, minimum there ; by law of Na- 
ture, and geometric demonstration ; — what could be done ? 
The Great Western, could weigh anchor from Bristol Port ; 
that could be done. The Great Western, bounding safe 
through the gullets of the Hudson, threw her cable out on 
the capstan of New York, and left our still moist paper-dem- 
onstration to dry itself at leisure. "Impossible?" cried 
Mirabeau to his secretary, " Ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot. 
Never name to me that blockhead of a word ! " 

There is a phenomenon which one might call Paralytic 
RadicaUsm, in these days ; which gauges with Statistic meas- 
uring-reed, sounds with Philosophic Politico-Economic plum- 
met the deep dark sea of troubles ; and having taught us 
rightly what an infinite sea of troubles it is, sums up with the 
practical inference, and use of consolation. That nothing what- 
ever can be done in it by man, who has simply to sit still, and 
look wistfully to ' time and general laws ; ' and thereupon 
without so much as recommending suicide, coldly takes its 



74 CHARTISM. 

leave of us. Most paralytic, uninstructiye ; unproductive of 
any comfort to one ! They are an unreasonable class who cry, 
"Peace, peace," when there is no peace. But what kind of 
class are they who cry, "Peace, peace, have I not told you that 
there is no peace ! " Paralytic Radicalism, frequent among 
those Statistic friends of ours, is one of the most afflictive phe- 
nomena the mind of men can be called to contemplate. One 
prays that it at least might cease. Let Paral;5^is retire into 
secret places, and dormitories proper for it ; the public high- 
ways ought not to be occupied by people demonstrating that 
motion is impossible. Paralytic ; — and also, thank Heaven, 
entirely false ! Listen to a thinker of another sort : 'All evil, 
' and this evil too, is as a nightmare ; the instant you begin 
* to stir under it, the evil is properly speaking gone.' Consider, 
O reader, whether it be not actually so ? Evil, once manfully 
fronted, ceases to be evil ; there is generous battle-hope iu 
place of dead passive misery ; the evil itself has become a kind 
of good. 

To the practical man, therefore, we will repeat that he has, 
as the first thing he can 'do,' to gird himself up for actual 
doing ; to know well that he is either there to do, or not 
there at all. Once rightly girded up, how many things will 
present themselves as doable which now are not attemptible ! 
Two things, great things dwell for the last ten years, in all 
thinking heads in England ; and are hovering, of late, even 
on the tongues of not a few. With a word on each of these, 
we will dismiss the practical man, and right gladly take our- 
selves into obscurity and silence again. Universal Education 
is the first great thing we mean ; general Emigration is the 
second. 

Who would suppose that Education were a thing which had 
to be advocated on the ground of local expediency, or indeed 
on any ground ? As if it stood not on the basis of everlasting 
duty, as a prime necessity of man. It is a thing that should 
need no advocating ; much as it does actually need. To im- 
part the gift of thinking to those avIio cannot think, and yet 
Avho could in that case think : this, one would imagine, was 
the first function a government had to set about discharging. 



IMPOSSIBLE. 75 

Were it not a cruel thing to see, in any province of an empire, 
the inhabitants hving all mutilated in their liinbs, each strong 
man with his right arm lamed ? How much crueller to find 
the strong soul, with its eyes still sealed, its eyes extinct so 
that it sees not ! Light has come into the world, but to this 
poor peasant it has come in vain. For six thousand years the 
Sons of Adam, in sleepless effort, have been devising, doing, 
discovering ; in mysterious infinite indissoluble communion, 
warring, a little band of brothers, against the great black em- 
pire of Necessity and Night ; they have accompUshed such a 
conquest and conquests : and to this man it is all as if it had 
not been. The four-and-twenty letters of the Alphabet are 
stni Runic enigmas to him. He passes by on the other side ; 
and that great Spiritual Kingdom, the toilwon conquest of his 
own brothers, all that his brothers have conquered, is a thing 
non-extant for him. An invisible empire ; he knows it not, 
suspects it not. And is it not his withal ; the conquest of his 
own brothers, the lawfully acquired possession of all men ? 
Baleful enchantment lies over him, from generation to genera- 
tion ; he knows not that such an empire is his, that such an 
empire is at all. Oh, what are bills of rights, emancipations 
of black slaves into black apprentices, lawsuits in chancery for 
some short usufruct of a bit of land? The grand 'seedfield 
of Time ' is this man's, and you give it him not. Time's seed- 
field, which includes the Earth and all her seedfields and 
pearl-oceans, nay her sowers too and pearl divers, all that was 
wise and heroic and victorious here below ; of which the 
Earth's centuries are but as furrows, for it stretches forth from 
the Beginning onward even into this Day ! 

' My inlieritaiice, how lordly wide and fair ; 
Time is my fair seedfield, to Time I'm. lieir! ' 

Heavier wrong is not done under the sun. It lasts from year 
to year, from century to century ; the bhnded sire slaves him- 
self out, and leaves a blinded son ; and men, made in the 
image of God, continue as two-legged beasts of labour ; — and 
in the largest empire of the world, it is a debate whetlier a 



76 CHARTISM. 

small fraction of the Keveuue of one Day (30,000^. is but that) 
shall, after Thirteen Centuries, be laid out on it, or not laid 
out on it. Have we Governors, have we Teachers ; have we 
had a Church these thirteen hundred years ? What is an 
Overseer of souls, an Arch-overseer, Archiepiscopus ? Is he 
something ? If so, let him lay his hand on his heart, and say 
what thing ! 

But quitting all that, of which the human soul cannot well 
speak in terms of civility, let us observe now that Education 
is not only an eternal duty, but has at length become even a 
temporary and ej^hemeral one, which the necessities of the 
hour will obhge us to look after. These Twenty-four million 
labouring men, if their affairs remain unregulated, chaotic, 
will burn ricks and mills ; reduce us, themselves and the 
world into ashes and ruin. Simply their affairs cannot remain 
unregulated, chaotic ; but must be regulated, brought into 
some kind of order. What intellect were able to regulate 
them ? The intellect of a Bacon, the energy of a Luther, if 
left to their own strength, might pause in dismay before such 
a task ; a Bacon and Luther added together, to be perpetual 
prime minister over us, could not do it. No one great and 
greatest intellect can do it. What can ? Only Twenty-four 
million ordinary intellects, once awakened into action ; > these, 
well presided over, may. Intellect, insight, is the discern- 
ment of order in disorder ; it is the discovery of the will of 
Nature, of God's will ; the beginning of the capability to walk 
according to that. With perfect intellect, were such possible 
without perfect morality, the world would be perfect ; its 
efforts unerringly correct, its results continually successful, 
its condition faultless. Intellect is like light ; the Chaos be- 
comes a World under it : fiat lux. These Twenty-four million 
intellects are but common intellects ; but they are intellects ; 
in earnest about the matter, instructed each about his own 
province of it ; labouring each perpetually, with what partial 
light can be attained, to bring such province into rationality. 
From the partial determinations and their conflict, springs 
the universal. Precisely what quantity of intellect was in the 
Twenty-four millions will be exhibited by the result they 



IMPOSSIBLE. T7 

arrive at ; that quantity and no more. According as there 
was intellect or no intellect in the individuals, will the general 
conclusion they make out embody itself as a world-healing 
Truth and Wisdom, or as a baseless fateful Hallucination, a 
Chimsera breathing not fabulous fire ! 

Dissenters call for one scheme of Education, the Church 
objects ; this party objects, and that ; there is endless objec- 
tion, by him and by her and by it : a subject encumbered 
with difficulties on every side ? Pity that difficulties exist ; 
that Eeligion, of all things, should occasion difficulties. We 
do not extenuate them : in their reality they are considerable ; 
in their ajopearance and pretension, they are insuperable, 
heart-appalling to all Secretaries of the Home Department. 
For, in very truth, how can Eeligion be divorced from Educa- 
tion ? An irreverent knowledge is no knowledge ; may be a 
development of the logical or other handicraft faculty inward 
or outward ; but is no culture of the soul of a man. A 
knowledge that ends in barren self-worship, comparative in- 
difference or contempt for all God's Universe except one insig- 
nificant item thereof, what is it V Handicraft development, 
and even shallow as handicraft. Nevertheless is handicraft 
itself, and the habit of the merest logic, nothing ? It is al- 
ready something ; it is the indispensable beginning of every 
thing ! Wise men know it to be an indispensable something ; 
not yet much ; and would so gladly superadd to it the ele- 
ment whereby it may become all. Wise men would not 
quarrel in attempting this ; they would lovingly co-operate in 
attempting it. 

' And now how teach religion ? ' so asks the indignant Ultra- 
radical, cited above ; an Ultra-radical seemingly not of the 
Benthamee species, with whom, though his dialect is far dif- 
ferent, there are sound churchmen, we hope, who have some 
fellow-feeling : ' How teach religion ? By inlying with litur- 
' gies, catechisms, credos ; droning thirty-nine or other arti- 
' cles incessantly into the infant ear ? Friends ! Li that case, 
' why not apply to Birmingham, and have Machines made, 
' and set up at all street-corners, in highways and byways, to 
' repeat and vociferate the same, not ceasing night or day ? 



7s CHARTISM. 

' The genius of Birmingiiam is adequate to that. Albertua 
' Magnus had a leather man that could articulate ; not to speak 
' of Martinus Scriblerus's Niirnberg man that could reason as 
' well as we know who ! Depend upon it, Birmingham can 
' make machines to repeat liturgies and articles ; to do what- 
' soever feat is mechanical. And what were all schoolmasters, 
' nay all priests and churches compared with this Birmingham 
' Iron Church ! Votes of two millions in aid of the church 
' were then something. You order, at so many pounds a-head, 
' so many thousand iron parsons as your grant covers ; and 
* fix them by satisfactory masonry in all quarters Avheresoever 
' wanted, to preach there independent of the world. In loud 
' thoroughfares, still more in unawakened districts, troubled 
' with argumentative infideUty, you make the windpipes wider, 
' strengthen the main steam-cylinder ; your parson preaches, 
' to the due pitch, while you give him coal ; and fears no man 
' or thing. Here loere a " Church-extension ; " to which I, 

' with my last penny, did I beHeve in it, could subscribe. 

' Ye blind leaders of the blind ! Are we Calmucks, that pray 
' by turning of a rotatory calebash with written prayers in it ? 
' Is Mammon and machinery the means of converting human 
' souls, as of spinning cotton ? Is God, as Jean Paul predicted 
' it would be, become verily a Force ; the M\hev too a Gas ! 
' Alas, that Atheism should have got the length of putting on 
'priests' vestments, and penetrating into the sanctuary itself! 
' Can dronings of articles, repetitions of liturgies, and all the 
' cash and contrivance of Birmingham and the Bank of Eng- 
' land united bring ethereal fire into a human soul, quicken it 
'out of earthly darkness into heavenly wisdom? Soul is 
'kindled only by soul. To "teach" religion, the first thing 
' needful, and also the last and the only thing, is finding of a 
' man who has religion. All else foUbws from this, church- 
' building, church-extension, whatever else is Jieedful follows ; 
' without this nothing will follow.' 

From which we, for our part, conclude that the method of 
teaching religion to the English people is still far behindhand ; 
that the wise and pious may well ask themselves in silence 
wistfully, "How is that last priceless element, by which educa- 



IMPOSSIBLE. 79 

tion becomes perfect, to be superadded ? " and the unwise 
who think themselves pious, answering aloud, " By this 
method, By that method," long argue of it to small purpose. 

But now, in the mean time, could not by some fit official 
person, some fit announcement be made, in words well-weighed, 
in plan well-schemed, adequately representing the facts of the 
thing, that after thirteen centuries of waiting, he the official 
person, and England with him, was minded now to have the 
mystery of the Alphabetic Letters imparted to all human 
souls in this realm? Teacliing of religion was a thing he 
could not undertake to settle this day ; it would be work for 
a day after this ; the work of this day was teaching of the al- 
phabet to all people. The miraculous art of reading and 
writing, such seemed to him the needful preliminary of all teach- 
ing, the first corner-stone of what foundation soever could be 
laid for what edifice soever, in the teaching kind. Let pious 
Churchism make haste, let pious Dissenterism make haste, 
let all pious preachers and missionaries make haste, bestir 
themselves according to their zeal and skill : he the offi- 
cial person stood up for the Alphabet ; and was even im- 
patient for it, having waited thirteen centuries now. He in- 
sisted, and would take no denial, postponement, promise, 
excuse, or subterfuge, That all English persons should be 
taught to read. He appealed to all rational Englishmen, of 
all creeds, classes and colours, Whether tins was not a fair 
demand ; nay whether it was not an indispensable one in 
these days, Swing and Chartism having risen ? For a choice 
of inoffensive Hornbooks, and Schoolmasters able to teach 
reading, he trusted the mere secular sagacity of a National 
Collective Wisdom, in proper committee, might be found suf- 
ficient. He purposed to appoint such Schoolmasters, to ven- 
ture on the choice of such Hornbooks ; to send a School- 
master and Hornbook into every township, parish and hamlet 
of England ; so that, in ten years hence, an Enghshman who 
could not read might be acknowledged as the monster, which 
he really is ! 

This ofiicial person's plan we do not give. The thing lies 
there, with the facts of it, and with the appearances or sham- 



so CHAETISM. 

facts of it ; a plan adequately representing the facts of the 
thing could by human energy be struck out, does lie there for 
discovery and striking out. It is his, the official person's 
duty, not ours, to mature a plan. We can believe that Church- 
ism and Dissenterism would clamour aloud ; but yet that in 
the mere secular Wisdom of Parliament a perspicacity equal 
to the choice of Hornbooks might, in very deed, be found to 
reside. England we believe would, if consulted, resolve to 
that effect. Alas, grants of a half-day's revenue once in the 
thirteen centuries for such an object, do not call out the voice 
of England, only the superficial clamour of England ! Horn- 
books unexceptionable to the candid portion of England, we 
will believe, might be selected. Nay, we can conceive that 
Schoolmasters fit to teach reading might, by a board of ra- 
tional men, whether from Oxford or Hoxton, or from both or 
neither of these places, be pitched upon. We can conceive 
even, as in Prussia, that a penalty, civil disabilities, that pen- 
alties and disabilities till they were found effectual, might be 
by law inflicted on every parent who did not teach his children 
to read, on every man who had not been taught to read. We 
can conceive in fine, such is the vigour of our imagination, 
there might be found in England, at a dead-lift, strength 
enough to perform this miracle, and produce it henceforth as 
a miracle done : the teaching of England to read ! Harder 
things, we do know, have been performed by nations before 
now, not abler-looking than England. Ah me ! if, by some 
beneficent chance, there should be an official man found in 
England who could and would, with deliberate courage, after 
ripe counsel, with candid insight, with patience, practical 
sense, knowing realities to be real, knowing clamours to be 
clamorous and to seem real, propose this thing, and the in- 
numerable things springing from it, — wo to any Churchism 
or any Dissenterism that cast itself athwart the path of that 
man ! Avaunt ye gainsayers ! is darkness, and ignorance of the 
Alphabet necessary for you ? Eeconcile yourselves to the Al- 
phabet, or depart elsewhither ! — Would not all that has gen- 
uineness in England gradually rally round such a man ; all 
that has strength in England ?- For realities alone have 



IMPOSSIBLE. 81 

strength ; wind-bags are wind ; cant is cant, leave it alone 
there. Nor are all clamours momentous : among living 
creatures, we find, the loudest is the longest-eared ; among life- 
less things the loudest is the drum, the emptiest. Alas, that 
official persons, and all of us, had but eyes to see what was 
real, what was merely chimerical, and thought or called itself 
real ! How many dread minatory Castle-spectres should we 
leave there, with their admonishing right-hand and ghastly- 
burning saucer-eyes, to do simply whatsoever they might find 
themselves able to do ! Alas, that we were but real ourselves ; 
we should then have surer vision for the real. Castle-spectres, 
in their utmost terror, are but poor mimicries of that real and 
most real terror which lies in the Life of every Man : that, 
thou coward, is the thing to be afraid of, if thou wilt live in 
fear. It is but the scratch of a bare bodkin ; it is but the 
flight of a fcAV days of time ; and even thou, poor palpitating 
featherbrain, wilt find how real it is. Eternity : hast thou 
heard of that ? Is that a fact, or is it no fact ? Are Bucking- 
ham House and St. Stephens in that, or not in that ? 

But now we have to speak of the second great thing : Emi- 
gration. It was said above, aU new epochs, so convulsed and 
tumultuous to look upon, are 'expansions,' increase of faculty 
not yet organised. It is eminently true of the confusions of 
this time of ours. Disorganic Manchester afflicts us with its 
Chartisms ; yet is not spinning of clothes for the naked in- 
trinsically a most blessed thing ? Manchester once organic will 
bless and not afflict. The confusions, if we would understand 
them, are at bottom mere increase which we know not yet 
how to manage ; ' new wealth which the old coffers will not 
hold.' How true is this, above all, of the strange phenome- 
non called ' over- population ! ' Over-population is the grand 
anomaly, which is bringing all other anomalies to a crisis. 
Now once more, as at the end of the Eoman Empire, a most 
confused epoch and yet one of the greatest, the Teutonic Coun- 
tries find themselves too full. On a certain western rim of 
our small Europe, there are more men than Avere expected. 
Heaped up against the western shore there, and for a couple 



82 CHARTISM. 

of hundred miles inward, the ' tide of population ' sweUs too 
high, and confuses itself somewhat ! Over -population ? And 
yet, if this small western rim of Europe is overpeopled, does 
not everywhere else a whole vacant Earth, as it were, call to 
us. Come and till me, come and I'eap me ! Can it be an evil 
that in an Earth such as ours there should be new Men? 
Considered as mercantile commodities, as working machines, 
is there in Birmingham or out of it a machine of such value ? 
' Good Heavens ! a white European Man, standing on his two 
' legs, with his two five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, 
' and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is wortli something 
' considerable, one would say ! ' The stupid black African 
man brings money in the market ; the much stupider four- 
footed horse brings money : — it is we that have not yet 
learned the art of managing our white European man ! 

The controversies on Malthus and the 'Poj)ulation Prin- 
ciple,' 'Preventive Check ' and so forth, with which the public 
ear has been deafened for a long while, are indeed sufficiently 
mournful. Dreary, stolid, dismal, without hope for this world 
or the next, is all that of the preventive check and the denial 
of the preventive check. Anti-Malthusians quoting their Bible 
against palpable facts, are not a pleasant spectacle. On the 
other hand, how often have we read in Malthusian benefactors 
of the species : ' The working people have their condition in 
' their own hands : let them diminish the supply of labourers, 
'and of course the demand and the remuneration will increase ! ' 
Yes, let them diminish the supply : but who are they ? They 
are twenty-four millions of human individuals, scattered over 
a hundred and eighteen thousand square miles of space and 
more ; weaving, delving, hammering, joinering ; each unknown 
to his neighbour ; each distinct within his own skin. They 
are not a kind of character that can take a resolution, and act 
on it, very readily. Smart Sally in our alley proves ail-too 
fascinating to brisk Tom in yours : can Tom be called on to 
make pause, and calculate the demand for labour in the Brit- 
ish Empire first ? Nay, if Tom did renounce his highest bless- 
edness of life, and struggle and conquer like a Saint Francis 
of Assisi, what would it profit him or us ? Seven millions of 



IMPOSSIBLE. 83 

the finest peasantry do not renounce, but proceed all the more 
briskly ; and with blue-visaged Hibernians instead of fair 
Saxon Tomsons, and Sallysous, the latter end of that country 
is worse than the beginning. O wonderful Malthusian proph- 
ets ! Millenniums are undoubtedly coming, must come one 
way or the other : but will it be, think you, by twenty mil- 
lions of working people simultaneously striking work in that 
department ; passing, in universal trades-union, a resolution 
not to beget any more till the labour-market becomes satisfac- 
tory ? By Day and Night ! they were indeed irresistibly so ; 
not to be compelled by law or war ; might make their own 
terms with the richer classes, and defy the world ! 

A shade more rational is that of those other benefactors of 
the species, who counsel that in each parish, in some central 
locality, instead of the Parish Clergyman, there might be es- 
tablished some Parish Exterminator ; or say a Reservoir of 
Arsenic, kept up at the pubhc expense, fi-ee to all j)arishioners ; 
for ivhich Church the rates probably would not be grudged. — 
Ah, it is bitter jesting on such a subject'. One's heart is sick 
to look at the dreary chaos, and valley of Jehosaphat, scattered 
with the limbs and souls of one's fellow-men ; and no divine 
voice, only creaking of hungry vultures, inarticulate bodeful 
ravens, horn-eyed parrots that do articulate, proclaiming. Let 
these bones live ! — Dante's Divina Commedia is called the 
mournfullest of books : transcendant mistemper of the no- 
blest soul ; utterance of a boundless, godlike, unspeakable, 
implacable sorrow and protest against the world. But in 
Holywell Street, not long ago, we bought, for three-jDence, a 
book still mournfuller : the Pamphlet of one " Marcus," whom 
his poor Chartist editor and republisher calls the " Demon 
Author." This Marcus Pamphlet was the book alluded to by 
Stephens the Preacher Chartist, in one of his harangues : it 
proves to be no fable that such a book existed ; here it hes, 
' Printed by John Hill, Black-horse Court, Fleet Street, and 
' now reprinted for the instruction of the labourer, by Will- 
'iam Dugdale, Holywell Street, Strand,' the exasperated Chart- 
ist editor who sells it yon for three-pence. We have read 
Mai-cus ; but his sorrow is -iiot divine. We hoped he would 



84 CHARTISM. 

turn out to have been in sport : ah no, it is grim earnest with 
him : grim as very death. Marcus is not a demon author at 
all : he is a benefactor of the species in his own kind ; has 
looked intensely on the world's woes, from a Benthamee Mal- 
thusian watch-tower, under a Heaven dead as iron ; and does 
now with much longwindedness, in a drawhng, snuffling, cir- 
cuitous, extremely dull, yet at bottom handfast and positive 
manner, recommend that all children of working people, after 
the third, be disposed of by 'painless extinction.' Charcoal-va- 
pour and other methods exist. The mothers would consent, 
might be made to consent. Three children might be left liv- 
ing ; or perhaps, for Marcus's calculations are not yet perfect, 
two and a half. There might be ' beautiful cemeteries with 
colonnades and flower-pots,' in which the patriot infanticide 
matrons might delight to take their evening walk of contem- 
plation ; and reflect what patriotesses they were, what a cheer- 
ful flowery world it was. Such is the scheme of Marcus ; this 
is what he, for his share, could devise to heal the world's woes, 
A benefactor of the species, clearly recognisable as such ; the 
saddest scientific mortal we have ever in this world fallen in 
with ; sadder even than poetic Dante. His is a wogod-like sor- 
row ; sadder than the godlike. The Chartist editor, dull as 
he, calls him demon author, and a man set on by the Poor- 
Law Commissioners. What a black, godless, waste-struggling 
world, in this once merry England of ours, do such pamphlets 
and such editors betoken ! Laissez-faire and Malthus, Malthus 
and Laissez-faire : ought not these two at length to part com- 
pany ? Might we not hope that both of them had as good as de- 
livered their message now, and were about to go their ways ? 
For all this of the 'painless extinction,' and the rest, is in 
a world where Canadian Forests stand unfelled, boundless 
Plains and Prairies unbroken with the plough ; on the west 
and on the east, green desert spaces never yet made white 
Avith corn ; and to the overcrowded little western nook of 
Europe, our Terresti-ial Planet, nine-tenths of it yet vacant or 
tenanted by nomades, is still crjdng, Come and till me, come 
and reap me ! And in an Et] gland with wealth, and means 
for moving, such as no nation ever before had. With ships ; 



IMPOSSIBLE. 85 

with war-ships rotting idle, which, but bidden move and not 
rot, might bridge all oceans. With trained men, educated 
to pen and practice, to administer and act ; briefless Barris- 
ters, chargeless Clergy, taskless Scholars, languishing in all 
court-houses, hiding in obscure garrets, besieging all ante- 
chambers, in passionate want of simply one thing, Work ; — 
with as many Half-pay Officers of both Services, wearing 
themselves down in wretched tedium, as might lead an Em- 
igrant host larger than Xerxes' was ! Laissez-faire and Mal- 
thus positively must part company. Is it not as if this swell- 
ing, simmering, never-resting Europe of ours stood, once 
more, on the verge of an expansion without parallel : strug- 
gling, struggling like a mighty tree again about to burst 
in the embrace of summer, and shoot forth broad frondent 
boughs which would fill the whole earth ? A disease but the 
noblest of all, — as of her who is in pain and sore travail, but 
travails that she may be a mother, and say. Behold, there is a 
new Man born ! 

' True thou Gold-Hofrath,' exclaims an eloquent satirical 
German of our acquaintance, in that strange Book of his, * 
' True thou Gold-Hofrath : too crowded indeed ! Meanwhile 
' what portion of this inconsiderable Terraqueous Globe have 
' ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no more ? 
' How thick stands your population in the Pampas and Savan- 
' nas of America : round ancient Carthage, and in the interior 
' of Africa ; on both slopes of the Altaic chain, in the central 
' Platform of Asia ; in Spain, Greece, Tm-key, Crim Tartary, 
' the Curragh of Kildare ? One man, in one year, as I have 
' understood it, if you lend him earth, will feed himself and 
' nine others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics 
' of our still glowing, still expanding Europe ; who, when 
"' their home is grown too narrow, will enlist and, like fire-pil- 
' lars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable 
' living Valour : equipped, not now with the battle-axe and 
' war-chariot, but with the steamengine and ploughshare ? 
' Where are they ? — Preserving their Game ! ' 
* Sartor Resartus, b. iii. c. 4. 



XjiOSt "to JSl3La.X3Q.^ 

is that woman who takes no pride in her reputation, who does not 
care to earn a good name for thrift and cleanliness. If love for oth na 
did not prompt a wife and mother to keep a tidy house and a bright 
clean kitchen a regard for her social standing in society ought to teach 
her to use Saj)olio in all her house-cleaning work. lOo. a cake at all' 
grocers. 



^^m^^^^mmmiiii/W0////MW^^ 




^OP 



infants and Children, 



*' Castoria is so well 
ted to children that I recommend 
it as superior to any prescription 
known to me. " 

H. A. AncHER, M.D., 

111 So. Oxford St., 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
The CeisTAUR CosirANY, 182 Fulton St., N. T. 
Send to Centaur Company for Atlas, Almanac and Receipt Booh 



Castoria cures Colic, Constt 
pation, Sour Stomach, Diarrhoea, 
Eructation, Kills Worms, gives 
sleep, and promotes digestion. 

Without injurious medication. 




PEarliN 



'^jHTJ BEST 

WASHING COMPOUND 

EVER INVENTED. 

No Lady, Married o? 
Single, Rich or Poor, 
Housekeeping or Boa>rd» 
£ng, will be -without it 
after testing its utility. 

Sold by all first-class 
Grocers, but bew^are oi 
worthless imitations. 



LO YELL'S LIBRARY ADVERTISER. 
EECENTLY PUBLISHED: 

UNDERGROUND RUSSIA: 

Revolutionary Profiles and Sketches from Life. 
By STEPNIAK, formerly Editor of " Zemlia i Volia" (Land and 
Liberty). With a Preface by PETER LAVROPP. Translated 
from the Italian. 1 vol. 12mo., paper cover, Lovell's Library, 
No. 173 price 20 cents. 

"The book is as yet unique in literature; it is a priceless contribution to 
our knowledge of Ru'ssian thougtit and feeling; as a true and faithful reflection 
of certain aspects of, perhaps, the most tremendous pohticial movement in 
history, it seems destined to become a standard work,"— Athbn-eum. 



An Outline of the History of Ireland, 

Prom the Earliest Times to the present day. 
By JUSTIN H. McCARTHY. 1 vol. 12mo., Lovell's Library 
No. 115, price 10 cents 

"A timely and exceedingly vigorous and interesting little volume The book 
is worthy of attentive perusal, and wiJi be all the more inieresung because it 
involves in its production the warm sympathies, the passionate enthusiasm, and 
the vivid brilliancy of style which one is glad to welcome from the son of the 
distinguished journalist and author —Christian World 

' All Irishmen who love iteir oountry, and all candid Englishmen, ought to 
welcome Mr Justin H. McCarthy slitile volume— An Outline of irish History ■ 
Those who want to know how it has come about that, as John Stuart Mill long 
ago pointed out, all cries for the remedy of specific Irish grievances are now 
merged in the dangerous demand for nationality, will do well to read Mr 
McCarthy s little book. It is eloquently written, and carries us from the earliett 
legends to the autumn of 1882. The charm of the style and the impetuousnees 
in the flow of the narrative are refreshing and stimulating, and, as regards his 
tone impartiality. Mr.McCarthy is far more just than is Mr.Froude. '— Graphi*. 

"A brightly written and intelligent account of the leading events in Irish 
annals. . , . ., Mr, McCarthy has performed a difficult task with commendable 
good spirit and impartiality '— Whitehall Reviett 

'To those who enjoy exceptionally brilliant and vigorous ■writing, as well 
as to those who desire to post themselves up in the Irisb question, we cordially 
recommend Mr McCarthy s little book.' —Evenins News. 



ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. 

Edited by JOHN MORLEY. 
Published in 12mo. vols., paper covers, price 10 cents each. 

Johnson. By Leslie Stephen. Thackeray By A Trollope, 

ScoTT, Bv R H Hitton. ^ " 

Gibbon. By J C. Morisoa. 
Shelley, By J A. Symonds. 
HuMB. By Prof Huxley. PR 8. 
Goldsmith. By William Black. 
Defoh. By W. Minto 
Burns. By Principal Shairp 
fipHNSER. By the Very Rev the Dean 
of St Paul s 



BuRKB By John Money 
BuNTAN By J A. Froude. 
Pope By Leslie Stephen. 
Btron By Processor Nichol. 
CowPER. Bv Goldwin Smith 
Locke. By Professor Fowler. 
Wordsworth B v F W H Myers , 
Milton By Mark Pattison 
Southey By Professor Dowden. 
Chaucer. By Prof. A. W Ward, 



New York: JOHN W. I^OVEIiL COIWPANY. 



HEART AND SCIENCE. 

By -V^'IL-KIE COLLINS. 

1 Vol., I2mo., cloth, gilt $1.00 

1 " " paper ; 50 

Also in Lovell's Library, No. 87 20 

"Benjulia" is a singularly interesting, and, in a way, fascinating creation. 
Mr. Collins can deal strongly with, a st"ong situation, but he has done noth'cg 
more powerful than his sketch of Benjulia's last hours. Mr, Gallllee and Zoe 
are capital examples of genuine and unforred humor; and the book, as a 
whole, id thoroughly readable and enthralling from its first page to its last." — 
Academy. 

" Mr. Wilkie Collins' latest novel is certainly one of the ablest he has writ- 
ten. It is quite the equal of ' The Woman in While ' and of ' The Moon- 
Btone,' consequently it may truthfully be described as a masterpiece in the 
eculiar line of fiction in which Mr. Collins not only excels but distances every 
ival in the walk of literature he has marked out for himself. 'Heart and 
Science ' is in its way a great novel, certainl3- tiJC best we have scon from Mr. 
Wilkie Collins since ' The Woman in White ' and' Armada'e.' "—Morrdng Post. 

" We doubt whether the author has ever written a cleverer story. . - . An 
eloquent and touching tribute to the blessedness and power of a true and 
1 oving heart. The book unites in a high degree th^ ai tractions of thrilling nar- 
rative and clever portraiture of character, of sound wisjom and real humor."' — 
Congregaiionalist. 



By OUIDA. 

1 vol., 12mo., cloth, gilt • $1.00 

1 " " paper 50 

Also in Loveir 8 Library, No. 112, 2 parts, each ., .15 

"'Wanda' is the story by which Ouida will probably be judged by the 
literary hi-itorian of the future, for it is di^*tingaished by all her hitrh merits, 
and not disfigured by any one of her few defects. In poiutof construction this 
moat recent contribution to the fictional literature of the day is perfect; the 
disilogues arc both brilliant and stirring, aud the descriptive passages are mas- 
terpieces. Ouida is seen at her brightest and be-t iu 'Wnnda' the book thrills 
by its dramatic interest, and delights by its singular freshness and unconven- 
tional style. There are no more attractive characters in English fiction than 
Wanda and her peasant husband, and increased fame inust result to the bril- 
liant novelist frjm this her latest work."- St. Stephen' s Revieiv . 

" We do not know anything Ouida has done that equals this, her latest 
novel, in power of delineating character aud describing scenery. Wanda is a 
fine, high-soiiled character."— Ci<i26«. 

"A powerful aud fascinating novel, deepiy interesting, with excellent 
•character portrayal, and written in that sparkling etvle for which Ouida is 
famous. ' Wanda ' deserves to take rank by the side of the best of her previous 
novels." — Darlington Post. 

"'Wanda' contains much that is striking. The central idea is finely 
■worked out. We have seen nothing from Ouida's pen thac strikes us as being, 
on the whole, so well conceived and so skilfully wrought omV— Spectator. 

JOHN W. LOVELL CO., 

14 & 16 Vesey Street, New York. 



lENRY JAMES, 

A DIQEST. 
By J. ^. KELLOaa. 



Price, 25 cents. 

"The 'Digest,' as a whole, will make a good preface to 
the publications Mr. James put forth during liis lifetime." — 

New Jerusalem Messenger. 

"A masterly essay." — N. J. Magazine. 



JOHN" W. LOVELL COMPAKY, 

14: and 16 Vesey St., New York. 

LOVELL'S_J.IBRARY. 

AHEAD OF ALL COMPETITORS. 



The improvements being constantly made in "Lovell's Library," have placed it 
in the Front Rank of cheap publications in this country. The publishers propose to 
still further improve the series by having 

BETXEH I*APEI«, 

BETTER, I»Ttir»^TI]>rG, 

LAHOER TYPE, 

and more attractive cover than any series in the market. 

SEE •VT^H^^T IS S-A.IID OE IT : 

The following extract from a letter recently received shows the appre- 
ciation in which the Library is held by those who most constantly read it : 

" Mercantile Librae Y, ) 

" Baltimore, August 29, 1883. J 

" Will you i:indly send me two copies of your latest list? I am glad to see that 
you now issue a volume every day. Your LibrLry we find greatly pi-eferable to the 
'Seaside' and ' Franklin Square' Series, and even better than the 12mo. form of the 
latter, the page being of better shape, the lines better leaded, and the words better 
spaced. Altogether your series is much more in favor with our subscribers than either 
of its rivals. S. C. DONALDSON, Assistant Libraman." 

JOHN W. LOVELL CO., Publishers, 



1%I 



LABOR and CAPITAL 



5 
A— 



NEW MONETARY SYSTEM, 

By EDWARD KELLOGG. 

Edited by his Daughter, Mary Kellogg Putnak. 



1 Vol., 12mo., Handsome Paper Cover, No. Ill of Loyell's 
Library, 20 Cents. 



" Labor and Capital " is a remarkable book. It shows how and why 
Capitalints get bo large a part of the yearly productions of labor, and why the 
producers get so small a part. The first edition of this worlc was publishtd ia 
1848, under toe title of "Labor and Other Capital; or, the rights of each se- 
cured and the wrongs of both eiadicated." At that time the publics^tion of 
such a work by a rich and prosperous merchant of New York created consider- 
able excitement and discussion among political economists. Tlie author was 
a man of deep percepiion, and, in thettateof the country, he foresaw with 
clearness all that has tran.'-pi ed in our financial history, during the pa&t thirty 
years. If the system elaborated by Mr. Kellogg had been fully, instead of 
partially, adopted by Congress, the various steps which have been taken in the 
aoplication of his theory would all have b;ien antic pated. Mr. Kellogg be- 
lieved that the Government of the United States should issue all money or 
currency that sh^juld be aliowerl to go into circulation. The present United 
States Treasury Note is a partial exemplification of this plan. The whole 
work has such an iniporiant bearing upon ihe finaEcial and political state of 
the country to day that Jie publishers are justifi.ed in issuing it in a cheap 
form, thus placing it within the reach of all who are interested in the indus- 
trial problem. ■ ' — 

A Characteristic Letter From 

WENDEI.L PHILLIPS, 

Boston, May 25tk, 1883. 
Mb. John W. Lovell, 

Dear Siu:— lam (am I ?) indebted to you for a copy of your reprint of 
"Labor and Capital," by Kellogg; one of the ablest and most convincing 
statements of the Financial Problem ever m.ade; and proposing with unansvs'er- 
able argument, the easiest, if not the only remedy for our troubles and dangers. 
I am glad that the loving devotion and rare ability of his daughter has made 
the work so perfect and clear in statement. She deserves well of the students 
of this question and has their gr&titude. 

Yours respectfully, 

Wendell Phillips. 
For sale by all booksellers and newsdealers, or sent post paid on receiptor 
25 cents, by the publiBhers, 

JOHN W. LOYELL COMPANY, 

14 A 16 Vesey Street, Ne^v York. 



TSie Most Popular Books of the Bay.' 



Works of "The Duchess, 



?j 



PUBLISHED BY 

JOHN W. I.OVELL COMPANY, 
14 & 16 Vesey St., ITew York. 

PHYLLIS, 

1 Vol., 12 mo., handsome cloh, gilt, $1.00. The sarae in paper, 50 cents. 

Also, in Lovell's Libraet, No. 78, aO cents. 

"Itis facinating to a high degree * * * Wo Jay aside the book 

with a sigh of regret that the pleasure is over, after mingiiug oar laughter ana 

tears with the VL.rying fortunes of the charming heroiue." — iV. Y. Evening 

Mail. 

"Certainly 'Phyllis' is one of th« most fascinating little novels that h,■^s 
appeared this year. — New Orleans Times. 



MOLLY BAWNc 

1 Vol., 13 mo., handsome cloth, gilt, $1.00. The same in paper, 50 cents. 
Also, in Lovell's Library, N >. 76, 20 cents. 
" Is really an attractive novel. Full of wif, spirit and gayety, the hook con- 
tains, nevertheless, touches of the most exquisite pathos. There is plenty of 
fun and humor which never degenerates into vulgarity. All women will envy, 
and all men fall in love with her. Higher praise we surely cannot give." — 
London Athenceum. 



AIRY FAIRY LILIAN. 

1 Vol , 12mo., m handsome cloth, gilt, $1.00. The same in paper, 50 cents. 
Also, in lovell's Library, No. 93, 20 cents. 

"The airiest and most sparKling contribution of the month is the brilliant 
romance by the author of " Phyllis.' It is as full of variety and refreshment as 
a bright and changeful June morning. Its narrative is animated, its dialogue 
crisp and spirited, its tone pure and wholesome, and its characters are graces 
fully contrasted. " — flarner s Magazine. 



MRS. GEOFFREY. 

1 ToL, 12mo., in handsome clot^i, gilt, $1.00. The same in paper, 50 ceats. 
Also, in Lovell's Library, No. 9J, 20 cents. 

■ ' The chief charm of the book is the beautii ul young Irish girl, Mona Scully. 
Mrs. Geoffrey, whose naturalness, joyousness, true-heartedness, and right- 
mindedness are as welcome as a morning in Spring, or a breath of fresh ait 
from the sea. She is an embodiment of health, humor and love, and unless we 
are greatly mistaken she wiK long be remembered by the readers of contem- 
porary fiction."— iV". Y. Evening Mail. 

O^OHN ^W. LOVELIi CO., PublisherSj 

14 & 16 Vesey Street, New "YoFfe. 



PtElCElSTTX^^^^- FXJBILjISI^ED. 



Attractive new editions of the following celebrated works of Sir Edward 
Bnlwer, Lord Lytton, 

By LORD LYTTON. 

1 vol , ISmo., large type, good paper, well bound, cloth, gilt, $100; also in 
Lovell's Library, handsome paper cover, aO cents. 

This work is happily conceived aiid ably executed. It is flowing and grace- 
ful in style and both piques and rewards the curiosity of the reader 



THE COMING RACE: 

Or, THE HEW UTOPIA. 

By LORD LYTTON. 
1 vol.. 12mo., large, clear type, good paper, attractive cover 10 cents 

Without deciding on the comparative share of imagination and meiiory in 
th.3 concoction of ihe work, we maj' pronounce it one of the most attractive 
books of the many interesting volumes of this popular author. 



A. STRANGE STORT. 

By LORD LYTTON. 

1 vol , 12mo., cloth, gilt, $1.00; also in Lovell's Library, handsome cover, 
20 cents. 

The plot shows discrimination of judgment as well as force of expression, 
and itu vigor of conception and brilliancy of description makes it one of his 
most readable novels. 



THE HAUNTED HOUSE; 

Or, The House and the Brain, to which is added, Calderon, the 
Courtier 

By LORD LYTTON. 
1 voL. 12mo.. 'iarge type, good paper, handsome cover, 10 cents. 
This is a weird imaginative creation of singular power, showing intensity oi 
conception and a knowledge of the remarkable efliects of spiritual influence a. 
Full Descriptive Catalogue sent on application. 

JOHN" W. LOVELL CO., Publishers, 

14 & IG Vesey Street, New York. 



" Earnest, honest and forcible ; radical '^.o the 
root ; bold, sweeping and dog'snatic." — Louisvtne Courier- 
Journal. 



D 



D 



FRO&RESS AND MEIT, 

By HENRV GEOROE. 

1 Vol. 12iuo., Paper Covers, 50 Cents. 

A new edition, printed from large type and on heavy good paper. 

This great book treats of the cause of indugtrial depression, and of increase 
of want with increase of wealth, and the remedy. 



THE PRESS SAYS: 

" Not merely the most original, the mo^t striking and important contribution 
which political economy has yet received from America, hut it is not too much 
to say that in these respects it has had no equal since the publication of ' The 
Wealth of Nations,' by Adam Smith, a century ago.' ." — 2f^ew York Herald. 

" Pew books have in recent years proceeded from any American pen that 
have more plainly borne the marks of wide learning and strenuous thought." — 
2\^ew York Sun. 

"A masterly book. Mr. George Is the only man who has not merely put 
down clearly, in black and white, what are the causes of social disease, but 
ofEered a cxne.'''' —New York Times. 

"A courageous thinker, who, though familiar with the learning of the books, 
follows the conclusions of his own reasoning." — New York Tribune. 

" If we were asked to name the most iinportant work of the Nineteenth. 
Century, we would name ' Progress and Poverty.' " — New York Era. 

"A book which no public man can afford to omit reading." — Washington 
Critic. 

" The most remarkable book of the century in its possible effects upon the 
course of human events." — Charleston News and Courier. 

" Every sentence is as clear as a sunbeam; every proposition is as legiti- 
mately traced to its logical result as one of Euclid's. — Galveston News. 

" A trumpet call to a struggle which cannot long be avoided." — Philadelphia 
Star. 

JOHN W. LOVELL CO., Publishers, 
14 & 16 Vesey Street, Nc^at York. 




These Grenades when thrown into a fire generate a gas 
•hich immediately extinguishes the fire within a reason- 
ble distance. They are small, neat, and handy, and no 
uilding should be without them. In Manufactories, 
[otels, Public or Private Buildings they are invaluable, 
[an be used by a child. They will not freeze, will not 
ijure flesh or fabric, but sure death to fire. $10.00 per 
ozen. We want live, active men to introduce them in 
very city, town, and village of the United States and 
Janada. Address 

HAYWARD HAND GRENADE FIRE EXTINGUISHER CO,, 

d07 Broadway, New York City, 



THE CELtB RATED 




Grand, Square and Upright 




PIANOFORTES. 

The demands now made by an educated mnslcal public are so exaet'i.'? that very few 
Pianoforte Manufacturers can produce f nstruments that will stand tho test wliich merit 
requires. SOHMBR & CO., as Manufacturers, rank amongst these chosen few, who are 
acfenowledged to be makers of standard instruments. In these doys, when Manufacturers 
urge the low price of their wares rather than their superior quality as an inducement to 
purchase, it may not be amiss to suggest that, in a Piano, quality and price are too in- 
separably joined to expect the one without the other. 

Every Piano ought to be judged as to the quality of its tone, its touch, and its work- 
manship; if any one of these is wanting in excellence, however good the others may be, 
the instrument will be imperfect. It is the combination of these qualities in the highest 
degree that constitutes the perfect Piano, and it is thiis combination that has given the 
" SOHMBR " its honorable position with the trade and the public. 

BeceiTed First Prize Centennial Exhibition, Fhiladelpliia, 1S76. 
Received First Prize at Exhibition, Montreal, Canada, 1881 & 1882. 

SOHMER & CO., Manufacturers, • 

149-155 B. 14tli St., New York. 



